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.