Welcome to our Second Grade Blog! We have had an awesome first few weeks in 204 and there is SO much to tell you all about. Please make sure that you read the Blog with your child too - this will make for lots of great conversation about all of the learning we are doing each day. When your child comes home and says they learned "nothing" at school today, you can show them the Blog and talk about all they truly did learn about in school!
Curriculum Night:
Thank you to everyone who came out to Curriculum Night! It was so much fun getting to meet everyone and tell you all about our day and all about what we will be doing this year in 2nd grade. At Curriculum Night we had Sign-Up forms to help with classroom parties as well as volunteer in the room. If this is something you are interested in doing, please email me so we can get you signed up! We have not yet signed up for Parent-Teacher Conferences as this year they are aligned with our trimester schedule and will be held on December 14, 2017. We will send out information about signing up for these on Skyward in the coming weeks.
During the year I will use email and the Blog as my primary modes of communication. We also use an App called Remind. It allows me to text a message right to you when reminders are needed or word needs to be spread quickly. If you have not done so already, please use the image below to set up your Remind connection. If you need any help with this, please let me know. I would like to have ALL classroom parents signed up by next Friday, September 29th.
Readers' Workshop:
We successfully have launched our Readers' Workshop in the last few weeks. We have had lessons covering all sorts of aspects of our reading lives including:
- I can choose my favorite book.
- I can choose a comfy reading spot.
- I can look and tell what Readers' Workshop looks and sounds like.
- I can describe a "Wow" Reader.
- I can describe a "So-so" Reader.
- I can describe an "Oops" Reader.
- I can use the Five Finger Rule to help me choose just right books.
Each one of these learning targets has helped us to create an ideal reading environment in our classroom for Independent and Partner Reading. We loved taking time to share our favorite books and talk about our "Comfy Reading Spots" at home. During Independent time we have really worked hard to be "Wow" Readers. We refer to this chart a lot as it helps explain how we do our best reading in 204. We have built up our Independent reading stamina to nearly 20 quiet, on task minutes of reading. This is awesome! Soon we will be completing our iReady Reading Assessment on the computer. This will help give me data on your child as a reader and set in motion a plan for guided reading groups and literature circles.
Language Workshop:
Language Workshop was also launched in the past two weeks! We will spend roughly a week at a time with a picture book doing all sorts of comprehension activities. Our first book was Wolf by Becky Bloom. Be sure to ask your child about this story! The hungry wolf quickly learned that the educated animals at the barn were not interested in our main character until he learned how to read! This was a fun book to launch Workshop with so that our readers' could see the importance of reading! We took time retelling the story with a beginning-middle-end chart, studied pictures from the story and did a "See-Think-Wonder" sheet as well as selected two vocabulary words from the text to add to our Picture Dictionaries (impressed and emerging). 
This week we got to know: Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians. Yes, you read that correctly! This is a book by Jackie Hopkins and is what we call a "Fractured Fairy Tale". We took the story and did many different activities. First, the story actually teaches us about picking "Just Right Books" which goes hand-in-hand with our Readers' Workshop. We put checklists for choosing "Just Right Books" from the story right into our Readers' Response Logs so we can use those to help us when we go book shopping in the classroom library! We spent time comparing and contrasting the story with the original Goldilocks and the Three Bears using a Venn Diagram chart. Lastly we selected our vocabulary words from the text to add to our Picture Dictionaries (position and temptation).
Writers' Workshop:
Launching Writer's Workshop, we begin the year with a Poetry Unit. We spent the first week simply talking about Poetry and emerging ourselves in great poetry. We looked through nearly 30 poetry books as a whole class and with partners to make a list of noticings about poetry! We also created a list of things to think about when studying a poem. This helped set the stage for our young writers' to then try this out on their own. We have had mini-lessons this week talking about how: poetry can be about anything, how poetry can be found in nature and how poetry can be found everywhere (including in our hearts). Each child was given a blank heart that was divided into several sections. There they drew pictures of things that were important to them. We laminated these and attached them to our writing folders so that we can use our Writers' Heart all year for inspiration and motivation in our writing. To write Nature Poems we took a mini field trip outside to observe nature! Of course we picked the one rainy day, but this allowed us to really find a lot happening in nature and we used the awning of the building in two different places to make our observations. This class can write! They are loving writing poetry! |
| Poets sharing their work at the end of Workshop! |
Word Study/Phonics
Two to three times a week we will do a word study lesson. We have begun our Word Study lessons and have been exposing the kids to a variety of ways we complete word study activities. We have done activities with magnetic letters/letter tiles where we make words, mix them up, recreate them, say them, mix them up again, recreate, etc. to build familiarity. We have also done activities with word cards where students have been making words using an onset and rime. Our first two lessons focused on consonant clusters (how you put two consonants together to make one sound, i.e. /tr/ in "trip"). We did a make-say-check sheet as well as a list sheet with these new words. Next we moved on to patterns in words, such as: if you can spell/read map, you can spell/read snap. Lastly we looked a high frequency words, words we see often in texts and did a make-say-check sheet with these words. This list of words will be coming home each month and you can use these words to help build fluency with your child - spelling them and reading them!
Math Workshop:
We have been cruising right along in Math Workshop as well! We began the year talking a lot about ten. We played games to help us make ten as well as did some different pencil and paper activities where we reviewed making ten. Making ten sets the foundation for building numbers and decomposing numbers. Next we moved onto a review of number lines and number grids. Our students have a solid understanding of number lines and number scrolls, but number grids have proven to be tricky! We filled in a number scroll as a class all the way to 1600, that was easy! However number grid puzzles take a few boxes out of a number grid and ask kids to fill in the missing numbers. This was very tricky for many and a skill we will continue to be practicing whole group and individually. Many struggled on our Number Grid Open Response to explain how they knew what the missing number was and why that number should be there. Look for these to come home in our next round of Friday packets so you can reinforce these skills at home too. Students have also been working on math facts. We are working to build fluency and automaticity with our addition number facts currently. We have been playing games that use number facts like: Fishing for 10, Addition Top-It, Turning over 10 and math fact games on our iPads. Most Math Workshops are done in station format where there is a whole group mini-lesson and then the kids travel to four stations. M: Math facts, A: Activity/Game at Table, T: Teacher mini-lesson and math journal page, H: Hands on Activity (iPads currently).
Second Steps:
At Dublin we have been fortunate enough to receive a grant from WLCSD's Foundation for Excellence (FFE) for Second Steps Kits. This is a classroom kit that is meant to help children in each grade level do their best learning and be their best selves. We have spent time looking at the first two lessons as we get our school year underway. The first lesson was all about being a respectful learner. The second lesson was all about paying attention and focusing during a lesson. The lessons give us time to problem solve, talk through making good choices, look at a scenario where a student is faced with a dilemma and think how they might solve their problem and then it ends with some type of activity to reinforce the concepts being taught. We LOVE Second Steps!
Important Dates & Reminders:
- September 27th - 1/2 Day of school! Dismissal begins at 11:55-12:05pm.
- October 4th - Student Count Day - please be here on time this day!
Thanks for checking out our blog and our learning! Have a fantastic fall weekend (although I think it's going to feel more like a mid-July weekend in the Mitten State).
Jen Weckstein :-)
P.S. Here's a glimpse of our first Main Moose and some Shamrock Winners this week! Way to go Weckies!
