Friday, October 15th

 Hello Weckie Families!!

What amazing work we have been accomplishing in second grade!! As a group we have really been busy learning, laughing and exploring all sorts of new things. We are in a pretty great routine now with our expectations for the day and I am seeing all sorts of growth already in our young learners. We have needed to stop many times this week to talk about distracting behaviors. We spent some time Thursday morning writing in our Thinking and Learning Journals answering the prompt: What can I do to help myself focus when distractions happen around me? We then had an awesome circle discussion where we took time to talk about how we can find different ways to ignore distractions (such as: picking a spot away from distractions, using the "Quiet Sign" or even asking an adult for help) rather than feed into the distractions. Our schoolwide SEL goal this week has revolved around being a good listener and we talked about how being a good listener relates directly to this because if you are a good listener, you are also ignoring distractions around you. This might be a great time to discuss this at home with your child too!

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop we are wrapping up our first unit of study, "Growing Second Grade Readers". We have been learning all about different strategies we can use when approaching books that are new and unfamiliar to us! Some mini-lesson topics have included:

• I can understand my book better by pausing and retelling parts.
• I can use post it notes in my reading to mark important places to talk about with my partner.
• I can use everything I know to figure out a tricky word.
• I can cross check to solve tricky words/I have strategies for figuring out tricky words.
• Different ways to read with a partner (and how to read with a partner)
• I can try to figure out what new words mean using the text to help me.
• I can notice how an author makes readers react.
• Readers must notice how whole books click together.
• Authors have an intent in teaching us a lesson in a book.

I will be launching reading groups next week with many of our students! Please look for colored book bags to come home with many, but not all of our children in the next week. If your child does not bring home a book to read just yet, please know that I will work with them soon, but they have scored high above our iReady cut score and they are already progressing where they need to be and/or beyond! The great thing about workshop is that the kids pick the books they want based on their abilities... so it makes for a just right fit for all levels of readers!

 

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop we continue to craft small moment stories. These are stories that are a personal narrative told about something a child did in a moment of time (i.e. going on a scary ride at the state fair, getting a tooth pulled at the dentist, the excitement of Christmas morning). I have to tell you, we have some incredible writers!! I have never copied as much writing paper as I have this year, and their folders are getting mighty thick with great stories. In Writing the last week or so we have been focusing on Author's Craft. We have been looking at things our favorite authors do to enhance their writing. Examples like: speech bubbles, rule of 3, sound word, bold words/small words, labels, etc. have all been good examples I have been encouraging our writers to use. In conferences we have been doing editing and revising to fix up the stories with me!

Phonics

In our Phonics instruction we have spent a lot of time working with vowel teams (ee, ea, ai, oa, oo, etc) and learning that when two vowels are put together, they usually make a long vowel sound of the first vowel in the pair. We say: When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking! So in the word "rain", you hear the long vowel sound of the a in the ai vowel team. We have also spent time working on the silent 'e' and all of his magical powers! Again, most words that end in silent 'e' have that long vowel prior! We hunted around the room to find good examples of silent 'e'. Next week we will be working with 'r' controlled vowels and reviewing high frequency words from first grade. Word lists will come home in the next week or so to help review these important words at home.

Language Workshop

In our classroom we also do something called Language Workshop. Each week we spend the week studying a high quality picture book enriched with descriptive language. Books we have read from this year have included: Peter Brown's My Teacher is a Monster, Becky Bloom's Wolf!, Jackie Mims Hopkins' The Three Libearians, and Kevin Henkes' Lily's Purple Plastic Purse and Chrysanthemum. The first day of the week we just read and get to  know the story. The second day we revisit the story, re-read it in its' entirety and then practice retelling the story (beg-middle-end) orally as well as do some comprehension questions about the story. The remaining days we take time to do a visible thinking routine (writing about our thinking about the reading) and then we also tackle 2-3 vocabulary words from the text and add them to our picture dictionaries.

Math Workshop

In Math for Unit 2 we are digging deeper with all of the different addition strategies that we can use! Friendly 10s are a huge help when it comes to adding single digits. We can use doubles, doubles helper facts and turn around facts for addition. We have been learning to play new games like: The Exchange Game and enjoying exploring with our math toolkits! It's amazing how much fun a calculator still can be ;-). Thank you for taking the time to do the homelinks you find beneficial for your child! I love seeing their work and progress. These will continue to come home every other math lesson.

Social Studies

In Social Studies we are wrapping up our first unit all about our local community! We have brainstormed the important people and places in a community. We have taken time to find our place in space as we went from our house, to our neighborhood, to our state, to our country! We have learned about our needs and wants as well as the needs and wants of a community. Then we moved on to learning about human and natural features in a community! One day we dug out a basket of maps just to see how maps work and to explore our local community on the map. We will wrap up the unit next week learning about the three types of communities (urban, suburban and rural) before we launch our science kit!

Halloween Party Update... Room Parent Volunteer Update...

Our Halloween Party will be on the morning of Friday, October 29th. I expect more information to be sent out from Danielle Bigi on this special morning. We are going to be asking that the kids come to school in their costume... yep, you read that right! Obviously no masks, weapons, shields, etc. and even moreso if your child takes the bus! The school day is a half day and we will still have Art for an hour in the morning. We will still have a Halloween Party in our classroom, but there will not be any parent volunteers allowed (and this is building wide). Right now with Covid protocols still in place, we are limited to one parent volunteer a day. Having to pick only ONE parent to help with our party would have been difficult and honestly, seems unfair. We do have one parent, Erin Roosen, who has offered to organize the party and she is going to handle all of the supplies outside of school, and I will handle it all inside of school. We may ask for a small donation per child to help cover the costs. I will keep you posted. I will also be reaching out to parents with children who have food allergies so we can all enjoy the party together. At this point, I am going to ask that you not send your child in with any type of food treat that they might share with everyone (i.e. like a goodie bag of candy) because of allergies. However a few kids have asked, and if your child wanted to pass out a bag of goodies moreso like stickers and such, that is totally fine. We have 18 kids in our classroom.

Parent Volunteers - Let's do it! I'm going to be reaching out in the next week to get some days/times set up for November. I will need a criminal background form for any parent looking to volunteer, so please let me know if you need another. The office has asked that we submit a calendar of dates prior to the month with the days/names filled in for all of the month. I am going to begin working on November so we are ready to go! Copying, laminating, playing math games, reading with kids... those are the types of things we could best use help with at this point. 

Last but not least, Dublin Trunk or Treat is next Friday night and a great time to come up to Dublin for some fun, outdoor fun! Kids can wear costumes and PTA has done a great job organizing this event! Thank you to everyone who has sent in Skittles for the Second Grade participatory donation.