Second Grade is AWESOME and definitely the place to BE! We have been so busy lately learning and having fun along the way. It's amazing what this group is already capable of doing only a month into school. This past week we had our first indoor recess. As a teacher, you worry what the classroom will look like after 20 minutes of playtime without me present... game pieces all over, construction paper scraps cut up on the floor, Lego's under tables, etc. In the staff lounge we even talked as a team wondering what we might come back to find. I can't speak for the other classrooms, but I can speak to ours. What did I come back to? The classroom was silent. The toys were picked up. The room looked like no one had been there except for there being 23 kids at their tables with smiles on their faces. Wow. I was floored and so proud. This group is pretty fabulous in my book!
Reader's Workshop:
The past two weeks we have been zooming in on strategies that make us great readers! We spent time learning to use a bookmark so that as a reader we can stop in one place and then return to that place the next day to continue our reading. Sticky notes work wonderful for this neat trick. Then we talked about learning about reading from other people and shared our Reading Interviews! If you haven't had a chance to check out the post on the blog before this one, please do. The feedback we got on the interviews has all been compiled by us and shared with our families. Lots of great advice and favorite book titles. I loved hearing the kids share what it was like for their special person to learn to read and being able to connect my own journey to their journey! I struggled with hearing problems in Kindergarten and struggled to learn to read in first and second grade. Now? I love reading and would consider myself a strong reader. Lots of eyes bugged when they heard that - it just takes practice and the understanding that we all learn at a different pace. Earlier this week we set goals for our reading and used things we learned about in the interviews and from our own experiences. We will keep these reading goals for the first trimester. Be sure to ask your child what their reading goal is! Lastly we started recording these reading strategies into our Response Logs' in our Personal CAFE Menu (C- Comprehension, A - Accuracy, F - Fluency, E - Extended Vocabulary). Under the Comprehension category we added: Read the title of a new book and take a picture walk through the text before reading, Reread a book a second time to help hold tight to the meaning of the story. Both strategies are great ways to improve our understanding of a book.
This past week we also took the iReady Reading Assessment. Without getting into too much detail here, the state of Michigan has now created a 3rd Grade Reading Retention Bill. The first graders at Dublin will be a part of this new legislature but we are being required to use the data tracking now and it's going to be awesome! In the next week or so I will be sending home information on your child's progress on this assessment tool. It's important to remember this is only one of several tools we will use to diagnose and instruct in reading this year. The info coming home will present you with information on your child's strengths and weaknesses while also making suggestions for what you can do at home to further help your child. Like I said, more to come!
Language Workshop
In Language Workshop we are learning about the author Kevin Henkes. He is our Author Mentor for our upcoming Unit 2 in Writer's Workshop and what better way than to read all of his books now to familiarize ourselves with his style. We have spent the week digging deeper with his book: Lily and the Purple Plastic Purse. This book has so many lessons the kids can learn from as well as awesome vocabulary. We spent time doing a Visible Thinking Routine where you step inside a person and analyze the story from their side. While the story is told from Lily's perspective, we analyzed the story from Mr. Slinger's perspective, her teacher. It was cool to step into his shoes and connect this story to events and expectations in our own classroom. Be sure to ask your child more about this! This week we added two more words to our picture dictionaries: jaunty and unique.
Writers' Workshop
In Writer's Workshop our work on Poetry has continued nicely! Mini-Lessons have focused on:
- I can attempt line breaks with one of my finished poems.
- I can use white space in selected areas of my poem.
- I can use beautiful language in my poetry.
- I can show instead of tell in my poetry.
- I can use repetition in my poetry.
During Writers' Workshop I spend my time circulating around the tables working with individual students on this launching unit. It has been fun to see the unique writing styles in our classroom and to see some who are truly passionate writers amongst the bunch! We spend the last ten minutes of Writers' Workshop sharing out 2-4 poems of students who have spent time in conferences with me. It's great to see them excited to show their friends all that they have worked so hard for during writing time.
Math Workshop
We are just wrapping up our first unit of math in Second Grade :-). Concepts we have covered included:
- Equivalent names for numbers (ex: 10 can be: 1 dime, 10 tallies, 5 +5, etc.)
- Making 10 (games played included: Fishing for 100s, Turning Over 10, Penny Plate Addition
- Quarters and Introducing Math Boxes
- Even and Odd Numbers and Patterns
- Skip Counting Patterns
- Comparing Numbers (<, > and =)
- Explorations (building with base ten blocks)
On Monday we will take our first Unit 1 Math Assessment. Students have been working hard with these reviewed concepts from First Grade. Be sure to look for math pages coming home in Friday packets. Many can stay home but some may ask you to fix something and then send them back to school corrected. Please make sure that an adult helps when a child is asked to re-do something from school. Thank You :-).
Social Studies
We have also launched our first Social Studies Unit this week... Our Community. We read the book On the Town and talked about what makes up a community and all of the places in our community. These kids were super knowledgeable with places around our community and even helped us develop a definition for what makes up a community! More to come with this fun unit...
Important Dates/Reminders:
Sidebar from Mrs. W. This week there has been LOTS of discussion about the PTA Boo Bash and our plans for Halloween at Dublin. Our PTA along with Mr. Drewno have been working incredibly hard to plan a new event, The Boo Bash, on Friday, October 27th at Clifford Smart Middle School. As much as we love holding functions at Dublin, our school is not equipped to handle 600 kids and their families - it's not practical in an elementary school built like ours (Did you come to the Sock Hop last year? It was CROWDED). That being said, CHS is a great location for the first year of the event because it has a large cafeteria and open space for a HUGE turnout! The Weckstein's will be in attendance in costume and hope we will see all of you there too. We know it's a busy weekend for many of you (our guy turns 4 on Halloween and we'll have family in town that weekend, two birthday parties, soccer and a Halloween 5k), but we are excited to come out and support the PTA. Additionally the PTA needs help from each grade level. Please check out the Sign-Up Genius below to see how you might be able to help out with the event.
Additionally, now we will proceed with our Classroom Party Planning. I will be in touch on Monday with the five parents who have signed up to help with our party - THANK YOU!! :-) If you did not sign up at Curriculum Night but are interested, please email me ASAP at JenniferPhillips@wlcsd.org. Our party will run on October 31 from 11am-12pm. We do ask that if you are attending the party, you are there to help the kids. We need parent support and help on this day - it's crowded, kids are in costumes and they are hyper! Please come to help work the party if you plan to be there :-).
Thank you so much for your support! Have a fabulous weekend... and don't forget to watch the big game! :-)
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| Spirit Day was in full effect ... feeling in the minority!! |
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