Friday, January 29th

 Good Friday Afternoon Weckie Parents!!

What a fantastic week we have had in Second Grade! This week we have been super busy doing all sorts of learning while sprinkling in some fun along the way too. It was fantastic to speak with everyone yesterday at Parent-Teacher Conferences and I look forward to finishing up with a few more today and on Monday. It was fun to still hold these meetings and share out all of the great work and learning our kids are doing. It was also wonderful to hear the same continual theme of happy kids because they are back in school. The feeling is SO mutual! 

Readers' Workshop:

The past two weeks in Readers' Workshop we have been up to a lot! Our mini-lessons have been on topics like:

• how to figure out the meaning of a new word
• how to check yourself as a reader to make sure what you are reading makes sense
• the intent of authors and what their lesson/message might be in a story
• writing craft moves that authors make that we can also use in our writing
• how the parts of a story go together to make a whole book click

With the completion of our latest iReady Diagnostic in reading, I will also soon be switching up reading partners. Books will be coming home for your children as well with information on what to do with them, how long to keep them and when to return them! Keep an eye out for the colored cloth book baggies in the next week :-).

Writers' Workshop: Work continues in WW on our Expert books! Many of you got to take a glimpse into your child's expert writing at conferences. The kids are working on writing a book all about a topic they consider themselves an expert! Several students are on to their second and third books already! They are very eager to teach us about things they already know. Mini-lesson topics have included:

• how to help readers' "picture" your writing
• writers' aim to "hook" an audience's interest
• how to do more than one thing at once in your writing
• how to clear up any confusion in your writing by answering the: who, what and why questions
• how to set goals to make your writing even better using a checklist

I will be eager to see which expert book each child selects to take to publishing to share with our class in the coming weeks!

Phonics:

In Phonics we spent a ton of time working with tricky homophones. We spent time with:

• there, their and they're
• your and you're
• to, two and too

We practiced writing these words and then took our new found words back to our own writing to improve our pieces. It was great to see so many students erasing their original writing to fix something up in one of their books using these tricky homophones!

This week in phonics we spent time looking at patterns in rhyming words to help us solve for other words. We were able to find that if we knew how to read a word like "light", we could also read: sight, night, fight, tight, might, etc.

Math Workshop:

Ones, tens, hundreds... oh my! We have really zoomed in on place value in Math! We have been working with base ten blocks and using them to show numbers in the ones, tens and hundreds values. We have also started using base ten blocks to add and subtract, showing how we can borrow or exchange a long (worth ten) for ten cubes (each worth one). Remember, a home link packet came home to launch the unit and you can follow along with the home-links to match our lessons.  

This coming week we will do math lessons: 4.9 The "Inch", 4.10 The "Centimeter", 4.11 Unit 4 Explorations.

Completed packets can be returned to school for a special surprise! :-)

Important Dates/Info

We are headed into a SUPER busy time of year...

Here are the dates to keep in mind:

• Monday, February 1st - 10:15-10:25am PICTURE DAY
• Tuesday, February 2nd - HALF DAY OF SCHOOL - Dismissal begins around 12 noon with the Shamrock Pick Up line
• Wednesday, February 3rd - Global Day of Play - all toys were due in TODAY for this activity. If your child forgot, they can always play with the loads of classroom toys that we have (which are also quarantining in anticipation).
• Friday, February 5th - 100th Day of School - Also known as: Dress like you are 100 Years Old Day / Valentine Cards and Boxes can begin coming in to school
• Monday, February 8th - ALL Valentine Cards completed and designed boxes are DUE in to school (We cannot take anything late and REALLY need your help turning these in on time).
• Friday, February 12th - Valentines Pizza Luncheon and Craft