March 21, 2024
Happy March is Reading Month! What a fun month of Mystery Readers we have had in 202! We have loved meeting all sorts of new "important" people! We have heard so many new books and enjoyed learning about so many new people. Thank you to all who have participated!! Please check our Twitter (X) account @WeAreTheWeckies to see all of the photos of our Guest Readers this month!
Phonics
In Phonics we have wrapped up our unit on that has focused on tackling big words! We have learned so many different strategies that we can apply to these words and have practiced using them in our own reading, in short passages I have given the kids and in shared reading format with the whole class! It has been nice to have this overlap with our Readers' Workshop which took time to stop and also, "Tackle Longer Words". The chart below is one you can use at home with your own child when reading books with longer words!
Additionally in phonics we spent time learning some important rules about endings that we can add on to words. We learned how to drop the "e" and add "ed" or "ing" endings onto words. We also took time to learn about dropping the "y" and adding "ing" or "ies" onto words ending in "y". These are skills we will continual to reinforce all year in our writing and notice in our reading!
Readers' Workshop
In Readers' Workshop we have been doing all sorts of great things! We have spent time tackling longer words, we have spent time reviewing all we know about characters and character traits and we have been immersed in several awesome mentor texts! We are currently focusing on: breaking words into syllables so we can read them part-by-part, learning to try reading words different ways based on long vowel and short vowel sounds and even looking for recognizable patterns we already know within words. We have also swapped partnerships and have spent time talking about our roles in partnerships.
In Language Workshop, a subset of Readers' Workshop, we spent a great deal of time reading Dan Santat books like, "Are We There Yet?", "The Adventures of Beekle", "After the Fall" and "Harold and Hog Pretend for Real!". We did a great deal of visible thinking routines, written retellings and zoomed in on all of the incredible vocab in the stories. We then moved onto the "Otis" series by Loren Long where we are currently LOVING all of the Otis books and learning about this friendly and heroic little tractor!
Writers' Workshop
We have moved onto an opinion writing unit where we are writing about all things that are AWESOME! We are learning to state our opinion, give three supporting reasons and then write a conclusion summarizing our opinion. It has been fun to hear the different opinions on: best food, best restaurant, best vacation spot, best sport, best sports player, best video game, best movie and more! Then we took a turn this week with our writing and have now learned how to write letters. We are working on letters to the authors of some of our favorite books, explaining why in our opinion, they are so AWESOME! Several are very eager to finish their letters in hopes we can send them off to the author!
Math Workshop
We are in the midst of an addition and subtraction number story unit. We have learned how to use diagrams like: part-part-total, change-to-more and Quantities and Differences boxes. We have used Open Number lines to help us solve these problems and are getting really good at deciding which strategy to use, and explain why! These strategies help students to understand the how and the why behind solving these realistic addition and subtraction problems. We also continue to work on on time and coin value as these are tricky skills for second graders.
Science
Our Air and Weather unit has been off to a great start! We have explored with air using all sorts of materials and have learned how to: trap air, compress air, use air to propel an object and more! We are now learning all about the different types of weather and associated precipitation! We'll hang out to some of the fun air experiments until the outside weather improves including: bubbles, kites, wind socks and wind catchers!
