Friday, January 15th

 

Happy 2021 Weckie Families!

We are off to an awesome start in our classroom for the new year! We actually spent the first few days back talking all about our goals for the new year and things we hope to accomplish in the second half of Second Grade! Yes, you read that right, we are at the half way point! We created projects with our New Years' Resolutions and Goals. It was fun to hear what the kids want to work on (and then we can all check back in down the road and see how they are doing - Are they really cleaning up more at home? Are they really helping with the dishes, or doing 50 pushups a day?) To be continued...

Phonics:

In Phonics we have been learning all about homophones! Homophones are words that sound the same, but are spelled different and have different meanings (for example: see and sea, meet and meat, pair and pear). We spent time looking for homophones in our books, we spent time writing silly riddles and jokes using homophones and then we wrote sentences using pictures that were showing homophones. We also spent time in Phonics working on ending punctuation and the purpose behind these different symbols. We did some group editing where we fixed up a writing passage that was missing things like: periods, question marks, exclamation marks, commas and apostrophes. We took what we learned in the Phonics mini-lesson and applied this to our expert non-fiction writing in Writers' Workshop as well.

Readers' Workshop:

In Readers' Workshop we are still working to establish routines for independent and partner reading time in our classroom. We are really working hard to build our reading stamina so that we are focused and on task during independent reading time. We are working on our partnership skills as well as we learn to navigate partner time with sharing of the responsibilities when reading with a partner. Our mini lessons have focused on: keeping tabs on comprehension, using post-it notes to mark important spots in our reading, skills for tackling tricky words, using more than one strategy at a time to figure out tricky words, using familiar beginnings and endings to help us figure out new words, and then how to figure out the middle part of an unfamiliar word.

We also worked on the iReady Reading diagnostic this week and are about 75% with this! The goal is to wrap this up next week and then move into the math diagnostic. I will have the data from both diagnostic available for parents for Parent Teacher Conferences on January 28th.

Writers' Workshop:

In Writers' Workshop we have launched a new unit on Expert Writing! What does this mean? Well our writers are writing a book about ANYTHING that they are an expert about! We have books about: dogs, sharks, snakes, dresses, Christmas, King Kong, soccer, baked goods and more. During this unit our writers are working on building their stamina for writing more and more about a topic, so that they are really educating their audience about this topic. Be sure to ask your writer what topics they are experts on and what they have been writing about in workshop!

Math Workshop:

This last week we finished up Unit 3 in math. We took the Unit 3 Assessment as well as completed the Unit 3 Challenge Activity and Open Response. The kids really did well as a whole with the Unit 3 topics considering some of the unit was taught virtually, some of the unit was taught in person and we had a 10 day break in between. These assessments were not scored but instead I have been leaving lots of feedback. These will come home next week with your child. Please know that the challenge and open response are meant to be difficult but also to push your child to think at a higher level about the basics of the math skills we are teaching.

This week we started Unit 4. I have sent the Unit 4 Home Links home so that you can do these at home along with us. We have just launched the unit and covered Lesson 4.1 and Lesson 4.2 , all about telling time with clocks! Next week, if you want to stay in line with us, we will be doing Lesson 4.3 on Tuesday, Lesson 4.4 on Wednesday and Lesson 4.5 on Thursday. Please remember, Home Links are optional in second grade however, this year more than ever, our kids REALLY need practice with Math and these are a great way to reinforce the concepts we are doing at school at home. If there is something on a Home Link that you are unclear of, please know I'm always here to help answer questions about the math skills we are learning.

Second Step:

At Dublin we use the Second Step program for our Social Emotional Learning (SEL). This happens to be near and dear to my heart as I am our Dublin building SEL Team Chairperson. This past week our classroom led the building wide Monday Morning Meeting on Zoom for all of Dublin to watch at 9:15am live from Room 204. This was a passion project of Mr. Drewno's to encompass our SEL themes across the building and give a common message to all students. With his retiring I have inherited this giant task but have to brag and say that our kids were AMAZING last Monday with this!! They were in the room of course at 9:15am when we went live in all of the Dublin classrooms and were super quiet while I was teaching, but also super helpful! They all came up to the computer and helped to lead the Dublin Promise (it was so cute). We had Mrs. Lenze do the Star Spangled Banner (our new Music teacher is AWESOME) and it was a great first Monday Meeting! We will be leading again on Tuesday next week... and most likely for many, many more weeks.

This week in our own SEL learning we have been talking all about feelings. In a matter of about 15 minutes we generated a list of 61 feelings we can have in our bodies and funny enough, we only stopped because we were getting tired of sitting on the floor in a giant circle. Later in the week when we had an issue arise as a class in PE, we were able to circle back up, identify our feelings, and do a Restorative Circle where we talked through the problem with the four students who were in trouble from PE, we brainstormed ways they could have prevented or changed their actions and had the BEST discussion. It was a true Restorative Circle!

Important Info:

Please make sure to jump on Skyward to sign up for Parent-Teacher Conferences. These will be held on Zoom on January 28th. We will have a very short day of school, I believe dismissal begins for the Shamrock Pick-Up close to 10:45am. And then conferences will begin on Zoom at 12:15pm. I will send out our classroom Zoom link once more, much closer to January 28th with a list confirming times, but you can also always find the Zoom link on our Google Classroom page.

Thank you to everyone who already answered the call of sending in cleaning wipes! We average 60-80 a day depending on our day (more on Tuesday when we eat lunch in the room) but have really done a nice job keeping the place clean and each other safe!

Valentines' Parties - These will still be happening at Dublin but the details have not yet been worked out. Please hold off on buying ANYTHING until we hear more. The traditional sending in of Valentines and goodies will most likely look different this year, but we will still do something! I am looking for 3-4 parents who would be willing to help from the outside to organize some fun for the afternoon of February 12th.

Last but not least... Covid Vaccines. Info will be coming out in various WL publications about teachers receiving the vaccines and what happens if it happens that our appointments are on week days. If a teacher is scheduled on a week day, their class will be notified ahead of time and will have ASYNCHRONOUS learning that day (independent tasks posted on Google). Keeping my fingers crossed, my two vaccines are scheduled for Sunday, January 24th and Sunday, February 14th. If these remain in place, we will NOT participate in this random asynchronous learning day as I'll be doing these on weekends. So please, no need to panic if you are worried about your child being home from our class on a random day. I do know that many teachers are working hard to secure night time and weekend slots, but having also seen what the Oakland County Health Dept. page looked like on the night it launched, 80% of the slots were weekdays during the day. I was fortunate to get those Sunday slots. You may have other children at Dublin who will need to be home on a random day, but minimally 7 days notice is supposed to be provided. 

Alright - that's all I have!! Get on with your weeekend!! ;-) Jen