Friday, April 26, 2024

 Hello Weckie Families!

Wow have we been busy in 2nd grade! I'm not even sure where April went as it FLEW BY! We have been hard at work and have also been having a lot of fun too! It's even hard to believe we are starting to do some of our end of the year prep work. We had a fun visitor in our room this week and she even said, "Oh my gosh, they are NOT looking like second graders!! These kids look like third graders!!" Michele McKendry was here visiting and was a former Dublin teacher for 19 years before moving to Lapeer Schools to be the principal at Shickler Elementary!

Phonics: 

We have spent a great deal of time in phonics working on tackling larger words! We have spent time practicing five different strategies (shown on the chart) for dealing with bigger words and how to tackle them. As we grow in our reading ability, so do the size of the words we read! Using strategies like: trying the vowel long or short and counting the syllables to break it up part-by-part are two of the most common we see with our young readers. These strategies also can apply to their writing as they learn to tackle bigger words in their writing.

Then we began a new unit where we are calling ourselves "Word Builders". We have been practicing with different strategies now for building big words. Strategies have included: using big parts you already know in a word, recording each syllable, checking for a vowel in each syllable, use words you know within the word and spell those parts correctly first, and when it doesn't look right - ask a friend, find it in a book or look it up!

We ended this week with work looking at the "long a" sound in -ain and -ane. This was tricky for our word builders but also important to learn the differences between!

Readers' Workshop:

In Readers' Workshop we have paused this week in order to take our iReady Reading Diagnostic (which by the way, THEY ARE ROCKING!! It's so great to see growth, even with this diagnostic being harder than the previous two reading diagnostics).

Prior to the diagnostic, we have spent time practicing making our reading more fluent. We spent time using four different strategies for helping us to sound more fluent in our reading! We practiced reading and re-reading parts in our heads, practiced scooping words up into longer phrases, thought about what the words meant and made our voice match those feelings and then practiced reading at the just right pace.

We also took time to fine tune our work in partnerships with our habits and our skills! We talked about how to approach a new book (take a sneak peek), decide how to read it (is it fiction or nonfiction), practice retelling along the way (the important part was...) and then re-read to build our fluency! We also reviewed those tackling big word strategies we had been working with so diligently in phonics!

Writers' Workshop:

In Writers' Workshop we are just wrapping up our opinion writing unit and moving on to an Informational Research Writing Unit. We began the opinion writing Unit writing our opinions about books! Students were able to pick out some of their favorites from our classroom library to write about and were pretty persuasive on why their book was: the best graphic novel, the funniest, had the best illustrations, was a part of the best series, etc. It was fun to hear what they had to say and why! Then we moved into a bend in the unit where writers' wrote to the authors of these books (yes we did!!) and told them all about their opinion of their book(s) and why they love them so much! We have our fingers and toes crossed that MAYBE we will hear back from one of them! 

Now we are moving into this Informational research type writing unit and will be reaching out soon asking for a little help at home soon as we learn to gather research and put the information into our own words!

Math Workshop:

In Math we have been learning all sorts of ways to solve story problems AND double/triple digit addition! We learned several diagrams we could use to help us organize numbers in a number story (Change to More, Start Change End, Part-Part-Total) and practiced filling them in for many different story problems. It can still be tricky for some if you should add or subtract at times when presented with a story problems. Please review your child's Unit 6 Assessment with them if story problems were tricky for them to decipher!

Then we moved onto practiced with ballpark estimates and partial sums for double digit addition. Ballpark estimates brought us to the tricky skill of learning to round numbers. We learned a little chant that has been helpful for our students:

For the digits 5 through 9, round the number up the line.

For the digits 4 or less, round that number down oh yes!

Then we took time to learn how to solve double digit addition in partial sums. This is where you add the tens up first, and then you add the ones up. Lastly you combine them all to get the total. (For example 49 + 34 = 40+ 30 = 70 and 9+4 = 13 and 70+13 = 83). Please pay attention to directions given in the home links so your child can practice the same thing at home that we are doing at school. 

Social Studies:

In Social Studies we are learning all about the government right now! We are exposing our kids to the branches of the government, the importance of the government and the reasons why we have rules and laws. While the concepts are a bit advanced, we have had great discussions sparking lots of interest in our government and all that they do for us!