Friday Nov. 8th

Friday, November 8^th

Writer’s Workshop

We started the week by reading Hailstones and Halibut Bones by Mary O’Neill.  It’s a book that is filled with color poems!  Each poem demonstrated different ways to think about colors using your senses… How would a color look? How would a color taste? How would a color feel? How would a color smell? Using the author’s craft from these poems, we have been working to create our own color poems.  Our poets also selected one of their favorite poetry pieces to bring to publication.  They edited and revised their poems to make them “just right” and conferenced with the teacher.  On Friday afternoon, all of the second grade classes were divided into four groups.  They took their poems to share with other second grade friends during our Second Grade Poetry Jam.  Thanks to all of you who donated water bottles or Oreo cookies…they were delicious!  We’ll be working on persuasive writing pieces during the next few weeks.

Reader’s Workshop

We are beginning our study of dialogue.  Your child should be able to tell you what dialogue is and what types of books have it.  Students searched their books during independent reading for examples of dialogue.  They also are learning about patterns of books that use dialogue.  We used Cynthia Rylant and Kate DiCamillo books to compare how authors choose to use or not to use dialogue in a book.  It was interesting to see that her series Mr. Putter and Tabby  uses no or very little dialogue in them while Henry and Mudge books seemed full of dialogue.  Additionally, we spent time looking for ways writer’s use “said” alternatives in texts. We brainstormed a giant web of different words for “said” and nearly found over 25 variations! We spent time looking at how these ‘alternatives’ can influence how we read a passage, such as if a character whispered or yelled. Students spent time acting out passages from their texts to continue their look into dialogue and using contextual clues from the author to signal dialect changes. Last we spent time looking to see if all books have dialogue. We made some big generalizations, such as non-fiction tends to not have dialogue while chapter books are loaded with conversations.

Math Workshop

Assessments, assessments, assessments!  At the beginning of the week, we reviewed for and our students took their first Benchmark Assessment.  Families will receive the scores during parent teacher conferences.  I was impressed with how well our class scored!  Mid-week, we reviewed making change by counting up.  Making change is a difficult concept. It’s something that needs to be reviewed often at home in order for mastery.  We ended our week by taking the end of the unit assessment for Unit 3.  Our next unit will focus on addition and subtraction facts.

Word Study
We began the week looking at words that have “oo”. Students learned that “oo” can sound like /oo/ as in moon or /uh/ as in look. We also tried adding on the silent ‘e’ to words to see how new words could be created. We ended the week by looking at words with the –am, -ate and –ake word endings.

Social Studies
Our second graders reviewed the cardinal directions and the use of a compass rose. We learned the acronym: “Never Eat Soggy Waffles” to help us remember the cardinal directions. Next, we explored the different elements and uses of maps through some hands-on stations.  As cartographers we used and atlas and explored, globes, and various types of maps.   Students will be given a homework assignment earlier that requires them to draw a map of their bedroom.  These maps will be due on Monday, November 18th.

Special News & Reminders

·        We have been blogging... check it out! http://www.classblogmeister.com/blog_edit.php?userid=118873

·        Thursday, November 14^th  – NO SCHOOL – Parent/Teacher Conferences All Day

·        Wednesday, November 20^th  – Bedroom Map DUE

Jennifer Weckstein and baby Liam

Here's More Halloween :-)

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Happy Halloween from room 204!

Week of October 21st

Parents,

 

Thanks for your support last week with the Fun Run!!!

 

Word Study
Last week we worked a bit with syllables.  These are important as they help your reader/writer chunk words for spelling and decoding.  We’ve also continued to look at how words are similar such as looking at consonant clusters at the beginnings of words.  Making these connections between words again help us to read and write more effectively.

 

Reader’s Workshop
Our goal bags are up and running.  Last week your child had an individual conference to discuss steps towards meeting his/her reading goal.  Some students have several easier books to practice fluency (I’ve been emphasizing that the one way to increase fluency is by reading easier or familiar texts).  Some students brought home a chapter book with which they will practice retelling. Please remember there are no time limits on the bags.  However, we also started reading groups this week sending yet another bag home with your child.  This bag must be returned daily with your child.  This week we shared how readers select just right books by using strategies such as the 5 finger rule.  We also discussed when and when not to abandon a book.  We ended the week reminding students how readers take care of our classroom libraries. 

Writer's Workshop
Our students are loving writing poetry!  It’s fun to see their excitement and hear them read their poetry with pride.  We used Pumpkin Eye as a mentor text last week.  We found the adjective and noun patterns throughout the book, made charts of similar words and recreating similar poems.  We also learned a bit about form poetry where we borrowed a Hello/Goodbye format from a Goodbye Spring/Hello Summer poem and changed it to create a Fall/Winter poem.  Writers also took a break from some poetry to learn about persuasive writing.  In social studies students were asked to write a persuasive for the community they liked to live in.  So we first introduced a persuasive through writing sales advertisements for a haunted house.  What fun they had with these!!!  They will  be hanging in the hall beginning next week. 

Math Workshop     

I hope your child has shared with you how we run math workshop!  Whenever possible (and lessons align to this model) we teach math in a workshop model.  We started this last week.  Students have been placed in like ability groups and are taught lessons through a large group mini-lesson and then a small group lesson.  While I’m teaching a small group students are at various math stations practicing similar skills in a variety of ways.  Ipods are one of the stations, but Monday –Thursday they must choose math games on the ipod.  On Fridays we have math explorations which are different and any app can be played on the ipods then.

We completed unit 1 last week by learning about fact families, name collections (Other names for 50 would be…25+25, 49=1, 60-10 etc.), frames and arrows where we follow an addition or subtraction rule to skip count and finally function boxes where students have to decode the rule for numbers going in and out of an imaginary function box (if 3 goes in and 5 comes out, the rule would be +2).  We ended last week with explorations about weight with a spring scale and a balance and also the introduction of multiplication through and egg/nest activity.  This is also a time when we put out familiar math games for students to practice.

This week students took their unit 2 progress check.  They did fairly well and the results went home with your child this week.  Please be sure to review this with your child.  Many students struggles on the last page with the function box.  Next, we started unit 3 with coin practice.  We started simple with showing coins to represent values.  Then it got a bit more challenging with making change.  This is a concept we will continue to work on throughout the year.  Please try to practice this at home with your child using loose change.                                                                                                                                                                  

Social Studies                                                                                                                                                                          We completed our “Community” unit and took our unit test.  Our next unit is about the geography of our community.

Important Dates and Reminders:

-Thursday, October 31^st:  Halloween Parade at 2:30.  Our classroom party will follow from 3:00-4:00.

-Tuesday, November 5^th :  Walled Lake Schools Safety, Security and Technology Bond Election.  Please remember to vote!

-Thursday, November 14^th:  Parent/Teacher Conferences

Friday, October 11th

It has been another fantastic few weeks in 204! As many of you are aware, I am going to be rescheduling Parent-Teacher Conference times in hopes of guaranteeing that I can be there! With an upcoming due date of November 18^th, I have spoken with Mr. Drewno and I will be holding Parent-Teacher Conferences on November 4^th through 6^th, (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday). Monday and Wednesday will run from 4:30-7:30pm and Tuesday will run from 4:00-7:00pm. I will be sending home info with your child to pick dates/times. Thank you for being flexible! I would much rather be able to have a P-T Conference with all of you, then leave this in the hands of Janelle Bensek (our long term sub) because she will just be getting to know your children.

Additionally, we need more people to help plan and work our Halloween Party on the 31^st. The party will run from 3:00-3:45pm. Right now we only have two parents which is concerning! If you can help, please email me at: JenniferPhillips@wlcsd.org ASAP! Thank you! :-)

A fun pumpkin painting project in anticipation of Halloween!

Word Study
In Word Study this week we have taken a look at forming possessives in words. Second graders learned that to show ownership of something, you add ‘s to a word. Then we worked with words with double consonants. Students worked on identifying two-syllable words with double consonants in the middle (lad/der, muf/fin). Children sorted word parts to create their own two-syllable words! Last, we learned about forming past tense in words by adding –ed or –d to the end of words.

Reader’s Workshop
In Reader’s Workshop this week, each child set reading goals for themselves. Time was spent talking with each child about their goal and the importance of setting goals for their reading. Ask your child the two reading goals that they set for themselves.  Look for a special reading bag to come home with your child …  Inside you will find the specific reading goal that your child and I have drafted, “just right” books and materials to help your child reach their reading goal. Please spend time with these books; do not return them the next day! Your child’s bag will have materials inside for them to either complete orally, written or use your help to answer questions, practice fluency, accuracy, etc.   I would expect the bags to come back to school one time per week if not twice. Each marking period, your child will set two new reading goals.  Your child also met their Reader’s Workshop partner and learned different ways to read and discuss books with their partners.  Ask your child about their new Reader’s Workshop partner.

Partners read side-by-side, with a book in the middle!

Writer's Workshop
This week as writer’s we spent more time with mentor poetry texts looking for similes and onomatopoeia’s! We then began drafting our own poems using different formats. Some were free verse while others were composed of a given topic – Halloween was one we did as a class using adjectives and nouns. This type of poetry will help us to create list of “Juicy” words we can use in future poems! The kids have especially loved our share time each Workshop where they have been given the chance to share a poem with their classmates.

Share time with the Pink Team!

Our Halloween adjective-noun poem!

Math Workshop                                                                                                                                                                      In Math this week our students spent time gathering different strategies for addition and subtraction using their doubles facts as a guide. We taught our students a chant that can help them to remember their doubles facts to the tune of “The Ants Go Marching”. Ask your child to sing the chant for you.  Once we had our doubles facts, we were able to learn the +9 strategy for addition. Put simply, if you can easily add 10 to any number, you can add 9 just as easy. Add 10 to the number and take away one. We also spent time with turn-around facts. Turn-around facts for addition is a reminder that 4 + 6 has the same sum at 6 + 4.  Next we spent working on counting strategies for subtraction, subtraction from addition and short cuts for harder subtraction facts.  We ended the week by exploring more with numbers in our math stations.  Look for a set of fact triangles come home with your child during the next week.  These are for you to keep at home.  It’s important for your child to practice their addition and subtraction facts on a weekly basis.  This will only make future math concepts easier for your second grader.

Social Studies                                                                                                                                                                          To continue our look into “Our Community”, we took a look at the region in which we live and zoomed out to see how our house is in a neighborhood, our neighborhood is in a city, our city is in a state and our state is in a country. We then moved on to “Needs and Wants” and talked about how needs are things we need to survive compared to wants simply being things we want to have. Try using that at home with your child – is it something you need or something you want? They probably won't appreciate me telling you this (wink wink).

Important Dates and Reminders:

-Friday, October 18^th: Fun Run- We will be running from 1:50-2:05 on the soccer field. All are invited to come and cheer us on! Please make sure to check the weather and dress your child appropriately.  Also remember to return your donation envelope as soon as possible.

-Thursday, October 24^th : Pumpkin Sale from 4:30-7:30 in the new gym.

-Thursday, October 31^st:  Halloween Parade at 2:30.  Our classroom party will follow from 3:00-4:00.

-Monday, November 4-6^th : Parent-Teacher Conferences in 204

-Tuesday, November 5^th :  Walled Lake Schools Safety, Security and Technology Bond Election.  Please remember to vote!

 

We love Dublin!

Friday, September 26th

Fall was in the air this week though our room temperature felt a bit like winter most mornings.  I mentioned to the children that they may want to bring sweatshirts in their backpacks until the heat is turned on here. 

We continue to settle into our routines in all subject areas and I’m hopeful that you’re hearing about our learning first hand from your child.

Word Study

This week we studied our first lessons with long and short vowel sounds.  Your child should be able to tell you two ways to know when a word will likely use its long vowel sound.  We used word cards to make long vowel words.  Students also worked again with consonant blends.  As a teacher I appreciate that our word study program spirals back to concepts covered for review and to deepen understanding.  For many students in my class I have discussed with them the benefits our word study lessons will have on their reading and writing skills. 

Reader’s Workshop

I completed most of the DRA testing this week and will be analyzing the data this coming week.  I’ve found that most students maintained their reading comprehension and word decoding skills, but have fallen with fluency.  Fortunately, this is often easily remedied with practice, practice, practice.  It is important for children to read “just right” or appropriately leveled books when reading to increase fluency.  In fact fluency building happens when reading texts that are familiar to the reader.  Please encourage daily reading at home.  Research shows that the number one way to increase reading is simply time spent reading regularly.  We kicked off our workshop this week learning about 3 types of classroom readers…the “Wow” reader, “So-so” reader and the “Oops” reader.  We created charts for our classroom to remind us what these readers look like.  Of course we are all striving to become “Wow” readers where we stay on task, are involved with our books, are quiet, use our known strategies, find comfy spots quickly etc.

Writer’s Workshop

Our class enjoyed several wonderfully written stories this week, which we explored for the author’s craft.  We spent time looking at Cynthia Rylant’s writing using repetitive text, lists, and circle backs (where the other comes back to  a particular phrase/ part of the story).  Students attempted using some of these crafts in their writings.   We also looked at Kevin Henkes’ stories again for similar crafts.  I was amazed to hear some of the pieces written this week during our workshop time.  Students enjoy  the sharing component of our workshop too!

Math Workshop

Our unit 1 (review of beginning math concepts) finished up this week.  Students seem more comfortable with coin counting, time telling and skip counting than they were our first week of school.   Most days I am able to check journal pages completed, but  I will take these home over the next week and complete any that I missed.  Once these are sent home it will be beneficial for you to review these with your child and have him/her redo any pages with which s/he struggled.  You’ll notice that it’s not always the concept that is misunderstood, but the directions (something we will be working on throughout the year asking students to slow down and process before jumping in too fast).  We completed the unit 1 review assessment Thursday.  This is only a unit review and not the benchmark test I referred to during curriculum night.  Remember that when the benchmark test is coming up, a study guide will be sent home.   

Social Studies

Students began our unit on Communities this week. We spent time brainstorming places we can work, live and play in a community. We read the book On the Town to look into all of the places and workers a person finds within a community. We generated a huge list of the workers and places in our community. Next week we will be learning about groups in our communities and create a map of our own neighborhoods for homework!

Important Dates/Reminders

-I am still missing several student faces for our face project. Please make sure these are turned in ASAP.

-In Friday packs this first week in October, please pay attention for papers with a “B” for beginning on them. These need to be reviewed, fixed and returned in a timely manner.