Monday, November 20, 2023

 Hello Weckie Families!!

It's been a few weeks but boy have we been busy on our end!! Thank you to all who have already sent in donations for our Food Drive at Dublin! Remember, we are collecting for Hospitality House in Walled Lake, to collect non-perishable foods. Our crew has already brought in a bunch of great items! This week your child will be bringing home their Unit 2 Math Assessment as well as some fun Thanksgiving goodies for you to enjoy with your families. The red books are something I have done for years, spanning back to my student teaching year with Laura Kauffman, and something I hope you can truly enjoy, share, and laugh about 15 years from now with your Weckie ... you'll see!

Readers' Workshop & Phonics

In Readers' Workshop we have wrapped up our first unit! We have been able to combine a bit of Phonics and Readers' as they have overlapped on similar topics! We have spent the last few weeks doing things like: working with vowel teams, spelling with familiar patterns, learning new words from the words we know with these patterns, looking at patterns in rhyming words (which can sometimes be spelled the same, and sometimes be spelled different - i.e. poor and more rhyme, but are spelled differently), and then used everything we know about rhyming words to find the rhyming patterns in a silly story called, "Knight School". Students have worked with partners and small groups to practice reading skills too! We are now moving into a non-fiction unit in readers, and a deconstructing big words unit in phonics!

Writers' Workshop

We have finally reached the conclusion of our small moments writing unit... yay! We are going to celebrate on Tuesday with a Publishing Party! Students have been deep in a revision cycle where they have spent time going back to the  stories they have created to dig deeper and make sure they have all components of a small moment. Students have used a "Narrative Checklist" to check for things like: a detailed beginning, a setting, characters with feelings mentioned, a story that stretches across many pages, a story that stays in the moment, an ending that wraps things up and even attention to capitals, lowercase letters, spelling and punctuation! I am so excited to celebrate all of their hard work with them tomorrow!

Science

In Science we have successfully grown wheat seeds... in straws!! That's right, you read that correctly. I posed a question, "Can you grow a seed without soil?" and the ENTIRE class said no. We had spent so much time talking about the importance of the soil for our brassica plants that not much attention was given to the possibility of a plant, growing without soil. Yet, several (not all), but several students have successfully grown a wheat seed in a straw. Next we planted grass and alfalfa seeds which we will use to imitate a lawn! Students will be trimming their lawns this week to see if the grass and alfalfa will regrow back! To be continued...

Mathematics

In our Math learning we have dug deep lately with various addition and subtraction strategies. Students are learning to use a variety of ways to solve these problems so that ultimately they can choose the way that works best for them! In the Unit 2 Assessment coming home today, please make sure to take time to praise your child for all of their great work and learning. Please also make sure to review anything that was still confusing to them. Coins are for sure something many of our kids need extra practice with. Helper facts using doubles also comes up on the front page as a tricky things for kids to do, yet they are SO good at rattling off doubles facts and answers! These tests do not need to be returned to school.

Important Dates:

*Wednesday, November 22nd: Field Trip Permission Slip and $16 DUE

*Thursday, November 23 and Friday, November 24- NO School for Thanksgiving Holiday

*Wednesday, November 29th: Field Trip to the Walled Lake Outdoor Education Center - INFO will come home on Monday with a reminder of how to dress/what to pack, etc. ALL kids will need a brown paper bag type lunch - disposable items only please. Depending on weather, we'll make recommendations closer to the date for clothing attire as we plan to be outside on and off throughout the day!

*Thursday, November 30th: Conferences Sign-Up on Skyward

Friday, October 27th

 Happy Friday Weckie Parents!

It's hard to believe it's the end of October and we have kids wearing shorts today (talk about a win)!! We have been busy in 202 learning lots, growing lots and having lots of fun together along the way. Yesterday our Dublin PTA so generously thanked each child for their participation in Color Run fundraising with a sno-cone from the Kona Ice Truck!

Word Work/Phonics

We have been learning all about homophones in our word work. Think of words that sound the same but mean different things (such as: see and sea, here and hear, write and right, etc.). We looked at riddles that used homophones and talked about how to translate them and had a good laugh along the way. Then we spent some focused time on troublemaker homophones like: there, their and they're as well as: to, too and two. While these are still confusing for some, for others they were totally clicking and understanding the differences! We'll keep working on these alllll year long in 2nd grade! We made pictures in our SNAP word books to help us to remember the differences between these tricky words.

We also took some time to continue our work with vowel teams. So often we say when we see two vowels in a word (like 'ea' in 'sea' we take the sound of the first vowel and it's a long vowel sound. "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking". But then we took a look at a mentor text titled, "Evelyn Del Rey is Moving Away". We found several examples of vowel teams that fit this rule but then, we found several vowel teams in words that did not fit this rule (grouchy does not have a long 'o' sound, nor does pigeons have a long 'e' sound). We brainstormed ways readers could attack these words and try many different ways to say the word before figuring out what must be the right way to read the word.

Readers' Workshop

In Workshop we have been digging deep with character elements in stories and new vocabulary in stories. We have spent time answering the following questions about several different books. 

• Who were the main characters? Who were other characters?
• What is the setting of the story? Where does it take place?
• What was the problem in the story?
  
• What were the main events of the story?
  
• How was the problem resolved?

Readers' have had time to do this whole group, with partners and with our new reading groups that have launched last week! These are also questions you should be asking your readers' at home after finishing fiction books that you read with them.

We have also dug really deep with vocabulary in the books we are reading. New words like: particular, returned, appeared, patches, privacy, jaunty, amused, and furious have been words we have pulled from mentor texts to attempt to use in our own writing and have added them into our SNAP word books. 

Writers' Workshop

We continue our work with personal narratives in Writers' Workshop. Students are working on generating books about a time they did something. Boy have they had some cool adventures to share and given me lots of fun ideas to do with my own kids! There have been many eager kids to share their writing with the whole class up on the big screen and they have been rewarded with shamrocks for being so very brave!

Math Workshop

In Math Workshop we are working with all kinds of addition strategies! We have generated a chart in our math journals of strategies like: doubles, making combinations of ten, using helper facts of 10, using addition number stories and using the turn-around rule for addition. We dug deeper with the turn around rule for addition (saying that 4+5 is the same as 5+4) and then the students were challenged to explain if the turn-around rule works for subtraction? Ask them! Does it work? Is 21-3 the same as 3-21? Students had to prove why they thought it did/did not work and then were given time to revise their answers based on findings of other students. I love these type of math lessons (they are called Open Response days) as we spend two days on a topic and we learn so much, from each other!

Science

In science we have been working on our new plants unit! Our brassica are growing well in our mini-greenhouse and this week we even planted wheat seeds in straws ... without soil!! The kids are convinced they will not grow. We shall see ;-).

Friday, October 13th - Happy Color Run Day

 Today was a much anticipated day in our classroom and across the school! We had such a great time out at the Color Run this morning! There was so much excited energy. Laughter filled the track as kids screamed and ran through clouds of color! Thank you for signing your kids up on MyBooster, thank you for all of the incredible donations to our school and thank you to all of the volunteers who helped make this special day possible for our kids. Wow!

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop we are digging deeper with story elements and character details. We have taken time to learn about story elements in books during Language Workshop the last two weeks and Readers' Workshop. Books we have used have included: Chrysanthemum, Wolf, Goldisocks and the Three Libearians, and Wemberly Worried. We have talked about finding the main characters. We have talked about learning to pick out the setting of a story (where it takes place). And then we talked about how you retell the big events of a story orally or written, making sure to include the problem and the resolution! Next we dug deeper with our character traits and looked specifically at the character Chrysanthemum, and how she changed over the course of the story, as many characters do!

Writers' Workshop & Phonics

We have spent this week digging deeper with our personal narratives. We have spent time looking at feeling words so that we can describe the feelings in our narratives of our characters. We have tried stretching beyond words like happy, sad and mad for words like: ecstatic, excited, miserable, frustrated, terrified, etc. Then in Word Work this week we overlapped and spent time with "Trouble Maker" words we looked for to fix up in our writing AND talked about when to use capital letters, and looked for and fixed those up in our writing too! So many great narratives have been written!

Math Workshop

This week in Math we took our Unit 1 Assessment. These came home with the Weckies on Thursday and are for you to keep home, to celebrate and to help your children practice and learn from. We launched Unit 2 with a review of dollar values and a new game called, "Money Exchange". Homelinks began coming home this week as well. I try not to send them home on Fridays and some days math will take us two days, so there might not always be a Homelink every day we do math!

Scenes from the Money Exchange game this week.

Social Studies

This week we took our Unit 1 Assessment together. The new social studies program has a lot of "meat" to the lessons. We felt as a grade level that doing the assessment together was a great way to review the concepts taught in the first unit. We learned all about how life has changed over time and ways that you can study how life has changed. One way we learned about was speaking to a primary source. Thus, this is where the Quest comes in with needing to interview an adult (the older the better) about their life in 2nd grade which we will compare next week to our lives in 2nd grade.

Important Upcoming Dates/Info:

October 17th - Social Studies Quest Interview DUE

October 20th - Dublin Spirit Wear Day

October 26th - Buster the Bus safety assembly

October 27th - Trunk or Treat @ Dublin 6-7:30pm

October 31st - 1/2 Day of School, Halloween Party 11-12noon (You must be signed up as a volunteer to attend)

Friday, September 22nd - Happy Fall Friday :-)

 Happy Fall Friday Weckie Fams!

We have had an incredible two weeks of learning and growing together as a group! Wow have they really done a nice job tackling routines and expectations in our classroom. I love this time of year as you begin to see all of the things we do daily, repetitively, become part of their routine. Our stamina in workshops is lengthening, partnerships are forming for things like math, phonics and reading, and new friendships are also being made!

I sent out information this week about a classroom directory. Please remember to add your contact info (as much, or as little as you want to share) onto our Google form ASAP! Here is the link: https://forms.gle/VJTPMPCEY7ZkDfeR7

Phonics:

In Phonics we have been reviewing concepts like: vowel teams (two vowels put together in a word), long vowels (times in words when vowels say their name), and beginning to work with our second grade SNAP words (words we should be able to read/write in a snap). We have introduced routines for working with partners during phonics, been hunting for examples of vowel teams in poems and around the room and then also took time to begin playing with a familiar text from Readers' Workshop, "Those Darn Squirrels" by Adam Rubin looking for examples of our "Phonics Professor Words". Please look for a list of SNAP words to come home with your child in their folder next week. (There's already too much coming home today).  You'll want to hang onto this list to review these words at home with your Weckie. 

Readers' Workshop:

In Readers' Workshop we have launched our first unit of study: Becoming a Big Kid Reader. We have been reviewing different skills we learned in first grade as readers that we will continue to use as second grade readers! We began talking with how Big Kid Readers: Read all through the day, across the whole word; Read longer books, using bookmarks to save one's place; and Read smoothly in phrases, right from the start. New partnerships have been formed and the kids are partnered up with a reader(s) who is just like them in ability and skill! I'm in the process of compiling iReady Reading data and will be reaching out to parents soon who have children who have qualified for an IRIP (Individualized Reading Improvement Plan) based on their score from the diagnostic. These kids will work with me in specific small groups to target learning goals that need more practice.

Writers' Workshop:

We are in the midst of a great unit in writing with our small moments. Writers' took time this week to formulate many different beginnings that they could use to tell their story (on stickie notes) and then picked one to move forward with. Today they had time to begin to brainstorm many different endings for their story (and next week again, they'll pick their best). It's always a fun unit to hear about the different "important" events in their lives that they choose to tell about in their narratives.

Math Workshop:

In Math we continue working to review concepts covered in first grade in our unit. We have done work with: coin value, counting on number lines, making combinations of 10, skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s, and we have been practicing filling in number grid puzzles. Our mathematicians have been exploring the Everyday Math suite online and learning to play new games on the site. They also had time this week to learn a new game called: Fishing for 10s after exploring their new math toolkits!

Social Studies:

We are well on our way in our new social studies unit as well! We have been learning all about families and traditions. This week we took time to talk about our extended families and all of the people we might include in our extended family. (I have to add, I love that my face made a cameo in many of their extended family drawings!)

Friday, September 8th - Welcome to 2nd Grade

 

Hello Weckie Families! Thanks for checking out our classroom blog and reading about all of the great things happening in second grade. We sure have been busy these first 8 days of school! We have been tackling classroom routines, classroom expectations, routines for workshops and routines for lunch and recess! We have come a LONG way in the first 8 days and have also been having a ton of fun getting to know each other better. We have done a couple of mixer games and have a running game going right now called, "Two Truths and a Lie". We have had fun learning more about each other and guessing what the truths are verses what the lie was. 

Thank you for sending your children each morning to school prepared to do their best! Please make sure that they always have: a snack, a water bottle and their purple folder every day. The office has not had "Emergency" snacks yet.

Phonics

We have just begun our first unit of Phonics titled, "Growing into Second Grade Phonics".  Our first series of lessons took a look at phonics words and concepts your children worked with in first grade. We received the ideas that we called Phonics Professors Words including: capitals, syllables, consonants, vowels, word parts, short vowels, long vowels, blends, digraphs, silent e, vowel teams, r-controlled vowels and contractions. These are all concepts we will continue to dig deeper with in second grade. We used our own names to check for these different phonics professor words and were surprised by what we found! (I.E. r-controlled vowels, silent e, number of syllables, vowels/consonants, short vowels/long vowels and more! Today we began working to review the silent e and how typically in a word with cvc+silent e, the vowel is a long vowel. For example, think of the name Nate. It ends with a silent e, and the 'a' vowel is long in Nate (long vowels say their name). We will continue working with this combination of long vowels and the silent e next week.

Readers' Workshop

We have very slowly launched our Readers' Workshop! We have built our reading stamina up to 15 minutes of focused, on task quiet independent reading time. I have enjoyed conferring with the kids listening to them read, hearing about their reading likes and dislikes and helping them to find a comfy spot to read around our room. We LOVED sharing our favorite books this week and found a lot of us enjoy the same book series or the same author! Thank you for sending these in to share :-).

Writers' Workshop

We have also slowly launched our Writers' Workshop! Writers' completed an On-Demand narrative piece last week where they were given time to write about a time they did something. A rubric will be used to score their writing and then guide my instruction through our narrative unit to help make us stronger writers! This week we launched that first personal narrative writing unit by brainstorming watermelons (big ideas) and seeds (events from the big idea). For example, my watermelon was our family trip to Atlanta this summer! My seeds were: The Georgia Aquarium, the Braves vs. Yankees baseball game and the Zoo Atlanta. Each one of those seeds will be a great small moment that I can write about later in the unit. 

Math Workshop

In Math we have begun learning routines for whole group instruction! We will rotate math instruction this year where some days we will work whole group and other days we will work in small groups. The first unit of study lends nicely to the whole group as we set up routines for slate work, then a mini lesson (right now lots of reviewing first grade concepts), introduce new games and work on journal pages. As the year goes on, we'll move into a more small group format where kids will work at their just-right level through the math journal pages, games will be differentiated to match learners and small group instruction will be needs based.  ("Number Line Squeeze" game pics below!)

Social Studies

This year in Walled Lake we have a brand new social studies program! The kids were super excited about their ginormous workbooks (literally excited, I promise) filled with colorful photos, activities, songs and more. We decided in second grade this year not to purchase Scholastic News magazines because the new curriculum looks a lot like Scholastic. Our first intro to the unit was all about families and how families from the past change to families today, but many of our traditions remain the same. We talked about different holidays that are important to our families and how our ancestors celebrated the same holidays similarly and differently.

Important Info:

Curriculum Night is Tuesday, September 12th at 6pm! Please meet in our classroom, Room 202 at 6pm. This is an adults only night.

Welcome to 2nd Grade 2023-2024!!

 Welcome to Room 202's classroom blog space! My name is Jen Weckstein and I will be your child's teacher this year at Dublin! I am so excited to have your child in my classroom this year. I will use this blog space to post newsletters 1-2x a month from our classroom. You can scroll back to see previous year postings as well which is kind of like a fun collaborative scrapbook! Make sure to bookmark this page, or use the little "follow" icon on the righthand side of the page to subscribe and get the newsletter sent directly to your email. I'm also pretty good at emailing parents as soon as a new blog is posted so you won't miss a beat! I look forward to getting to know you and your child better this school year! Yay!

Friday, May 5th

 

Hello Weckie Parents!

Happy Sunny Friday... finally!! We have been super busy here in 202. This week we launched our weekly Show-n-Tell, wrapped up some special goodies for Mother's Day and earned a special Oreo treat just for being such awesome, hard working kids! Thank you for sending in your field trip money this week and a special thank you to all of our awesome chaperones! We will be bringing 14 chaperones with us to the Troy Historic Village - How awesome is that?

Phonics

In phonics last week we spent time reviewing all of the different camouflaged letters/combinations of letters we have learned thus far in the unit. We went on a "Camouflage Hunt" as we scoured books, posters, charts, etc. all around and in our classroom. Combinations we looked for included: kn-, wr-, gn-, soft c, soft g, -dge, gh, qu-, -ck, and ph-. While these are tricky combinations, it was so amazing to see how well our spellers quickly picked up these concepts and began spelling new words. Even if they weren't fluently spelling with them, being able to recognize and read them within words in texts was a huge first step!

This week, we have been working this week with two very important spelling rules:

*Drop silent 'e' before adding -ed or ing to words. (example: live --> living, lived)

*Double the consonant before adding -ed or -ing in short vowel + consonant words (drop --> dropped, dropping)

We spent time working with these words on whiteboards as we: practiced spelling new words, tried using blends, chunks and the two endings to make new words and even did a partner activity where kids formed words together where they needed to follow these rules.

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop we have embarked on a new unit of study focusing in on reading different genres of books. I have placed books of baskets on each table that we have been rotating that include: fantasy, mystery and realistic fiction books. With fantasy books we are looking for: magical things, magical settings and adventures or quests. We have read two chapter books as a class in this genre including: Dragons in a Bag and Gooseberry Park. In the mystery genre we are looking for things like: detectives, a case and clues! In the realistic fiction genre we have been looking for features including: realistic problems and people who are the same or different from you. As a class we have read: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Super Fudge, Fudge-A-Mania and are now in Double Fudge, enjoying the challenges an older and younger brother face growing up.

In the baskets we are rotating at the tables, I've tried to place in some books that are also very new including series like: Nate the Great, Cam Jansen, Fly Guy, Mr. Putter and Tabby, Yasmin, Little Shaq and Jayden Toussaint. It has been fun to encourage readers to branch out and try new genres to see if they may find a new favorite genre! 

We have about half of our class done with the iReady Reading Diagnostic. I have seen SO much growth from ALL who have finished their diagnostics so far...yay! It's pretty amazing to see the results of all of their hard work really pay off! We will continue working on this diagnostic next week and plan to begin the math diagnostic the week of May 15th.

Writers' Workshop

We have slowly been launching our poetry unit! Our writers' listened to a story called The Important Thing by Margaret Wise Brown and spent time noticing how each double page spread featured a new poem about a different object. Then our students wrote their own "Important Thing" poems! Look for their published poem to come home in the next few days! On Monday, for our poetry writing, kids will be writing about an object and can bring in ONE small object from home if they'd like! Students without an object will be asked to select something from around the room. Ideas might include: a piece of fruit, a special rock, a feather, a lucky charm or any other small object! One of the coolest poem's last year was written about a green crayon, so the objects most definitely do not have to be anything fancy!

Math Workshop

Centimeters, meters, inches, feet, yards... we have been MEASURING everything lately!! We are deep in a part of our math curriculum that focuses on being able to estimate length and then measure to the nearest centimeter, meter, inch, foot or yard! We also have taken time to talk about why some times it's better to use one unit over another! If we wanted to measure the length of our room, we found that yards worked way better than inches or even feet! Soon we will move into Unit 8 which will bring us to a study of geometry! Shapes are always fun for second graders! We'll be learning the names of two and three-dimensional shapes and also spend time noticing shapes around the room and constructing our own shapes from toothpicks and marshmallows!

Social Studies

In our Economy Unit we have been learning a great deal about resources this week. We have learned about natural resources, human resources and capital resources. We spent time watching a few short videos on how different things are made: ice cream, cotton candy and crayons. We took time after each video to list the natural resources that were used (items that come from nature), the human resources that were used (the people who produced the goods), and the capital resources that were used (the tools that the human resources could use over and over again to produce a product). Information has been sent home about our Market Day on May 31st! While this seems like a long time from now, we wanted to give ample time for your child to either select their ten items or make their ten items. Please make sure to keep the note handy as it will serve as your child's business license on the 31st. They will need the signed form to give them permission to sell and shop.

Important Upcoming Dates:

Tuesday, May 16th: Half Day of School - Teacher Professional Development

Friday, May 19th: WLN Senior Walk @ Dublin

Tuesday, May 30th: Troy Historic Village Field Trip

Wednesday, May 31st: Market Day in 2nd Grade

Friday, June 2nd: Dublin Field Day

Friday, June 9th: Dublin Ice Cream Social

Friday, April 21st

Hellloooo Weckie Parents,

Yikes! It has been awhile since our last Blog post!! We have just been super busy doing so many fantastic things and I wanted to give you all sorts of updates. 

Thank you to everyone who has already sent in their field trip permission slip, $10 for students, $8 for adults and interest in chaperoning! We have had more than 2 parents ask to ride the bus so I'll be having one of the kids pull names out of a hat next week. If you are still interested in chaperoning and being on the bus, please fill out the form and return it ASAP. Due to some necessary steps we must take to get payment to the THV we need to have ALL permission slips and payments in to the school by Friday, May 5th. While I realize this is quite far from our field trip on May 30th, it sounds like it can take a couple of weeks for the district to cut a check and we want to make sure the payment is in our hands when arrive at Troy on the 30th.

Phonics

In our phonics we have been working diligently on tackling big words! We have spent time learning to: 

• read across a word methodically from beginning to middle to ending
• break words into two parts between the two consonants in the middle
• learn when a double consonant signals a short-vowel sound
• how to break up challenging words that end in consonant + le

Then we moved on to looking at letters that camouflage themselves into words! For example, we talked about the silent consonant in words that begin with: wr, kn and gn. We spent a lot of time noticing how the w in 'wr', the k in 'kn' and the g in 'gn' are actually silent! We learned that just like animals who can camouflage, some consonants can use camouflage to make sounds you wouldn't expect! To wrap it up, we even took some time to work with partners using word cards that fell into these three categories as we practiced reading and learning new words. 

Next we moved on to the soft and hard sounds of c and g!

• c can make a soft sound like: cider, cylinder, cycle
• c can make a hard sound (more like a k) like: carton, common, camp
• g can make a soft sound like: gym, gem, ginormous
• g can make a hard sound like: garden, goose, gobble

After each lesson we have taken time to find examples of these words in our own independent reading books and we have revisited some classroom favorite books to see how we read words all the time with the hard and soft c and/or g!

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop we wrapped up a brand new unit that coincided nicely with our phonics unit! We learned about tackling longer word and tackling longer stories! We applied strategies we learned in phonics into our reading but also dug deeper with shorter chapter books. "Sadiq and the Perfect Play" was our mentor text by author, Siman Nuurali. We learned different ways we could hold onto the important parts of a longer text by: jotting a post-it note that told about characters (names and features), practice retelling the parts of a story before reading the next portion (orally or mentally), jotting post it notes of main ideas down to keep track of what's being read and reading with fluency to practice acting out a part of a story to help you remember all that has happened.

We are approaching another round of iReady testing in May. We believe we will be starting around the first week in May for second grade and will communicate this a bit more as the time gets closer. It's a great idea to not only use the practice lessons at school but also try them out at home. I have been working with our kids who are on IRIPS in smaller guided reading groups and really trying to get them the additional support they need before the diagnostic as well! 

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop we have been learning all about opinion writing. We have learned how to: state our opinion clearly, give three reasons why we have that opinion and write more about each reason, and then restate our position in the ending! First we took our opinions and wrote about books in the form of a letter as we tried to persuade someone about a book award we were giving and why. I heard from all of our writers and boy did they give out some great awards to some incredible books! Award topics included: Funniest Book, Most Exciting Character, Best Graphic Novel, Best Graphic Novel Character, Calmest Book, Coolest Illustrations and more!

Once we had the form set for how to write an opinion piece about a book, we moved onto giving awards for other things. Popular topics included: favorite restaurant, favorite video game, favorite toy, favorite vacation spot, favorite summer sport and more! We have some pretty persuasive writers in Room 202!

Math Workshop

Math Workshop has been a VERY busy place! Double Digit Addition and Number Stories have CONSUMED us!! We have spent time learning different strategies for solving double-digit addition and have focused on: using base ten blocks to add, using open number lines and using the partial sums method. We have also taken time to learn about ballpark estimates and determining when to round up or round down! Lastly we have incorporated a lot of this into number stories for addition and subtraction. Unit 6 Math Assessments were completed last Thursday and MOST will come home tomorrow in Friday packets. I have a few kids with a few parts to still finish up and those may not come home until next week. Overall, the kids did really well with this! You'll see if I have marked anything on the test for your child to continue to review at home.

Social Studies

We are learning all about the economy in social studies! We started with a lesson on needs and wants, and then moved on to learning all about goods and services! With goods and services came work on producers and consumers. It was interesting to hear from the kids about times they were producers and consumers at local businesses, as well as what businesses they find to be important in our community! We will conclude this unit with a Market Day (way more info to come on that) probably some time around the beginning of June!

Upcoming Important Dates:

Thursday, April 27th: 1/2 Day of School - Staff Professional Development

Friday, May 5th: Field Trip forms/Chaperone papers/Payment DUE

Tuesday, May 16th: 1/2 Day of School - Staff Professional Development

Friday, February 3rd

 Happy Friday Room 202 Families!

There’s so much to tell about all that we have been up to lately in room 202! You have some very hard working children! Make sure you read all the way to the end to see reminders about upcoming important dates and events for our Weckies!

Phonics

In Phonics we have been working on common spelling patterns in words (aka rhyming patterns). We have spent time looking through several different books and zoomed in on a book called, “Knight School” which was filled with rhyming words. We have found that some rhyming words are spelled differently (more and floor) and we have found that sometimes there is one spelling that is more common than another. We have tried even fixing up our own writing to make sure we have spelled words correctly that have those common spelling patterns. 

Readers’ Workshop

Our focus the last two weeks has been on “Keeping Track of Longer Books”. We are finding that as we grow as readers, so does the length of the books we are reading! As a class we just finished the book, “Dragons in a Bag” by Zetta Elliott. This chapter book has a long and at times complex story and plot, which we were able to refer to often when brainstorming strategies for keeping track of our reading with longer books. We created the chart pictured below with four steps for retaining info when reading longer texts. I encourage you to use these strategies with your child at home too as you read longer books. Stop and ask them: What is happening so far? What is this mostly about? How has the character changed? Are there any lessons to be learned? And if they are unable to answer these questions, use the strategy we practice of re-reading for information. Oftentimes the kids are so caught up on figuring out words that they are not even following the events of the story!

We also took time the last two weeks to work on our iReady Reading Diagnostic! I have seen such growth in so many of our hard working readers! I will reach out soon with information if your child has qualified for an IRIP and will also send the scores home as soon as we get everyone done with reading (some are moving very carefully and very slowly) as well as the math scores completed too!

Writers’ Workshop

In Writers’ Workshop we celebrated our Informational Unit TODAY!! We took time to share our non-fiction expert books in small group rotations and then with anyone else we wanted to share with! Kids were eager to show off their different styles of writing and knowledge about a given topic. It was fun to circulate around and hear all that our kids know about and all that they wanted to teach each other in their books. Our kids are SUCH experts on so many topics!! We have decided to keep a basket of these books in our classroom library for another week or so, so that everyone has a chance to see/read them all! We toasted our hard work with mini-cupcakes and a round of applause for all  of our great work!

Math Workshop

Money, money, money… MONEY!! We have money on our minds in Math right now! We are doing all sorts of work with coins. It is important that you review coin values at home and even let your own Weckie try paying for things with coins when you go places! We are learning to count coins to find total value, we are learning to pay for things by making the exact amount in coins and we are learning to make change from small amounts of money, like from a quarter or from a dollar. This is a tricky but important concept for our young mathematicians to tackle and learn! Unit 4 Math Assessments went home at the end of last week/beginning of this week. Lots of great growth on those tests. The unit test tends to be a higher score for most than the cumulative test, but the cumulative test is most important as it shows all your child has retained this year. Concepts like filling in blank boxes on hundreds grids and solving for odds and evens were concepts that were still tricky for many.

Social Studies

We are in the midst of our geography unit in social studies! We have explored all sorts of local and Michigan maps, noticing features, our neighborhoods and even our school! We have created classroom maps including important map characteristics like: a title, a compass rose, a key and symbols! We have now moved onto a look into different types of landforms that we have here and around the world!

IMPORTANT Reminders/Dates:

Friday, February 10th - Hundreds Day - Please make sure to send your child to school on this day, in their senior citizen form! They’ll want to come dressed in their best hundred year old outfit ready for an exciting day! We will be playing BINGO and are counting on each child to donate one small prize to our BINGO game! This should be a new, unopened toy (think dollar store) that would be enjoyed by all. 

Monday, February 13th - Send in Valentines/Valentines Holders - You can begin to send in all cards/boxes on this date. A note has already come home with a class list and details on the box. Please do not send these in before the 13th!

Tuesday, February 14th - Valentines Party - We will be having an ice cream sundae/movie party and appreciate ALL of your help filling the Sign-Up Genius! Please wait to send in food items until the day of the event. Anything else can come in on the 13th. I am looking for 2 parents to help with this party! We will need help from 2:30-3:30pm on the 14th! Thank you!! Please email me ASAP!!

A few scenes from Global Play Day on February 1st...

Friday, January 6th - And we are BACK!

 Hello Weckie Fams and a big HAPPY NEW YEAR from me!

It has been a great week back here, even if it has only been three days! We have gotten right back in the saddle and are off doing great things.  I wanted to extend a huge thank you to all who sent in donations for our winter party, our parents who helped work the party: Monica Anglin, Cassandra Vasquez, Cathy Ivan, Kayla Tiller, Bridget Young and Kelly Jacek AND our two awesome party planners, Monica Anglin and Renee Gamble! We had a blast!! 

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop we have moved onto a unit called: Bigger Books Mean Amping Up Reading Power. Our first bend in the unit helps us to practice making our reading more fluent. Mini lessons have included: rereading aloud and in our head to practice sounding fluent and scooping up words into larger phrases, so we read like we sing, smooth! We have been using Arnold Lobel's "Frog and Toad All Year" as our mentor text to practice reading with fluency. Guided Reading groups have resumed work as well with just-right books in the classroom.

Phonics

In Phonics we are continuing our work from before break with homophones. Homophones are words that sound the same, tend to be spelled different and mean different things. Examples include: meet/meat, pair/pear, board/bored. We spent a couple of days playing with silly homophones in rhymes and jokes before moving on to trouble maker homophones like: to, too and two. Next week we will tackle: there, their and they're plus your and you're. 

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop we are working on expert books! Each child was asked to think of a topic that they consider themselves an expert on and then create their own non-fiction book! We have books about: dogs, video game consoles, tigers, polar bears, bunnies and LEGO just to name a few that have already been placed in our non-fiction book basket! We have spent time this week talking about our audience and making sure our writing is easy to read as well as exciting and engaging for our readers.

Math Workshop

In Math we are doing a lot of work right now with place value and using base-ten blocks. We have been reviewing place value in terms of: ones, tens, hundreds and thousands. We have used base-ten blocks to represent numbers with actual blocks and base-ten shorthand (written form). We have even started talking about trades when we can exchange 10 cubes for a long (equals 10) or how we can break down a long into 10 cubes to borrow. You can see where we are heading with this in terms of double digit addition and subtraction. We learned a new game called "Target" this week where we targeted the number 50 and 100 in making them with base-ten blocks. Last we ended the week beginning to look at measurement using the foot! You can see pics below from the math game and our measurement with a real (foot long) foot!

(Top four: Target game.... Bottom three Measuring with a foot)

Upcoming Important Dates

No school - January 16 and January 17**

Scholastic Book Order Due: January 18th

Dublin PTA Bingo Night - January 20th at Dublin @ 6:30pm - Info sheet coming home today!

100th Day in 2nd Grade - TENTATIVE: Friday, February 10th  (You'll want to start thinking about this day soon as we ask you to transform your 2nd grader into an adorable, 100 year old senior citizen. More info will come home in the coming weeks, but a head's up on this special day can also be super helpful in the planning purposes!)