Happy 2018!

Hello Weckie Parents and Happy 2018!

We are excited to be back in school and continuing to learn and grow as a team! We have been pretty busy these first few days back in January and are excited to tell you all about it!

Prior to break we had an awesome ALL Second Grade Holiday Party. Thank you to all of the parent volunteers for your donations and time on the day of the event. We had so much fun celebrating with all of the second graders at Dublin.

All of our Gift of Reading books.. Excellent!

Sing Along Fun :-)

Party Activities

Nice catch!

Delicious treats

And fun crafts

Also before break two of our guided reading groups put on a little Readers' Theater Play for the students in our classroom, "Sleeping Beauty". Below you can click to watch the video of their performance. Please make sure you are following our classroom page on Twitter @WeAreTheWeckies so you can see performances like this, photographs and more news out of our classroom. Please click on the link below!

Readers' Theater 204 Presents:


This past week we also filled our Big Catch!!! Wahoo!!! In our classroom we have a board called "The Big Catch" and it holds several stuffed animal fish. Whenever we receive a compliment from another teacher OR do something spectacular in the room without being asked to, we earn a fish. It's been fun to challenge the Weckies to do their best and earn these fish. They are very excited about our class party Friday afternoon.

Readers' Workshop:
Lots has been happening in Workshop daily!! We have moved into a new unit where we are learning about facts and opinions in our reading. Students have been reading familiar mentor texts like Otis by Loren Long and The Bad Seed by Jory John. We have spent time picking through the books pulling out facts (and evidence that proves them true) and then formulating our opinions about the characters and stories based on our prior knowledge. We have talked a great deal about accepting other opinions even if they differ with your opinion and the saying: We can agree to disagree.  Readers' had time later this past week to take their own just-right books and pick out one character. They've been given the task of finding character traits (facts) about their character and then time to create their opinion of their character and story. It has been fun to hear what they have to say opinion wise!

Additionally in Workshop there has been a TON of testing going on!! On average, our DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) takes 20-30 minutes per child with the length of time increasing one-on-one if they are independent at a level and need further testing. As a result, Guided Reading Groups have been temporarily on hold. I plan to wrap up testing Friday this week and you can look for new groups to resume next Tuesday! We will be sharing our findings and data at Parent Teacher Conferences for reading progress and growth.  I have been so PROUD of all that our students' have been learning to do and show in their reading.

In the room the testing has several implications... Partners are switched up for Partner Reading, Reading Groups are shuffling and students are learning to shop for new just-right books in different locations in the classroom library. This makes for a lot of excitement and a lot of review of our Readers' Workshop expectations and procedures for independent and partner reading time. 

Please make sure that your child is reading nightly at home regardless of when books come home. It is imperative that our kids are being exposed both at school and at home to quality reading materials.

Writers' Workshop
In Writers' Workshop we have connected our new writing unit to our new reading unit! Students are learning how to write friendly letters that contain information about books that they are reading - both facts and opinions. We have said our letters sound like movie previews as they tell someone a little bit about the story but leave the ending for the person to find out on their own. We have been talking about all of the components that make a friendly letter good quality including: date, address, greeting, body of letter, 2-3 facts and 2-3 opinions, questions, closer and signature. We actually wrote our first letter about The Bad Seed book and sent it to Mrs. Doyle in third grade. Her students were so excited to get mail and to read our book! They replied with a letter about the book, My Teacher is a Monster and loaned us their copy of their book.  We are finding that letter writing can be a fun and motivational way to get kids to write more about their reading in second grade!

Math Workshop
We have just completed our math work in Unit Four this week! In this unit we have:

• practiced telling time on clocks (hour, minute, to the closest five minute)
• learned about A.M. and P.M. and talked about which activities in our day are morning, afternoon and evening type activities
• worked with base-ten blocks to explore place value (ones, tens, hundreds)
• learned to break (decompose) numbers apart (654 is 600 + 50 + 4)
• worked with base-ten blocks to make exchanges in addition 
• learned to measure using both metric and the U.S. Standard forms of measurement (specifically: centimeters, inches and feet)

Measuring with a real foot ;-)

Exchange Game with base-ten blocks

Thank you for continuing to return Home Links and completed Math Journal pages in a timely manner! It has been great to see such excitement around math lately with the kids getting to measure in school and at home.

Social Studies

In Social Studies we have begun our second unit - The Geography of our Community. We have begun working on our map skills. While many of us depend on our phones and devices in cars to get us from point A to point B, it is still important for our students to have basic map skills (like when you are at the mall, lost in the halls of Dublin, or trying to find your terminal at the airport). We have looked at a few different maps and focused in on finding the key, the title, and deciphering where things are located on the map using the cardinal directions (north, south, east and west) and also learning to use location words (below, next to, near by, in front of, behind, above, to the left of, to the right of, etc.) 

Soon we will dig deeper with the map of White Lake and begin to notice all of the features our community offers including several schools, roads, parks, lakes and more!

If you have any pocket type maps at home that you would like to share, please put your child's name on them and send them in! We will do our best to look and use them carefully.

iReady Diagnostic

The time has come for us to take our second iReady Diagnostic of the school year. This week we will take the reading portion and in the next few weeks we will take the math portion. We spent time this week reviewing the different parts of iReady - what we see on the screen, how to choose the best answer, reminders to do our best and to take our time. Be sure to check in with your child and ask how this is going for them. We use the laptops in our classroom and let the kids work wherever they are most comfortable. Remember, each child has their own test and the questions will vary based on what they answer correctly or incorrectly. Look for more info soon on your child's progress on this one of many tools we use to check in on student learning and growth.

Important Reminders and Dates

Outdoor Recess

Outdoor Recess is a funny thing in Michigan in January. Our children will go outside every day as long as the playground is not icy. If it is raining we will be indoors. To remain indoors on cold days, we need a windchill below zero. Otherwise, you should plan for your child to go out daily. While you might not see a lot of snow, the playground is wet and muddy. Snow gear helps protect your child and their clothes. An extra pair of sock in their backpacks is also a great idea. I would suggest checking your child's winter gear nightly as many things need to be washed and dried out. Thank you!

Monday, January 15th Martin Luther King Jr. Day - No School. The WLCSD Martin Luther King Jr. event will begin at 6pm at Walled Lake Northern High School

Thursday, January 18th Parent - Teacher Conferences beginning at 12 noon running through 8pm. Please sign up on Skyward if you have not already. There are still many time slots available and I would love to meet with everyone. Please remember we will begin dismissal around 11am on that Thursday.

Friday, January 19th Student Council Sponsored Spirit Wear Day - it's Tropical Day at Dublin! Be sure to send your child in their best tropical attire. Remember, we will still have outdoor recess that day and will need your child to have warm clothes to wear outdoors.

Friday, January 19th PTA Sponsored Family BINGO Night at Dublin: Come join the Weckstein's and play BINGO! Wouldn't it be fun if we had our own table full of Weckies? Hope to see you there!

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Wow, has this month flown by! There are a lot of great things happening in and out of our classroom that I have to share with you in this Blog Post. Where to begin?? First of all, I am sure you will agree with me, I was SO incredibly proud of our little musicians at their concert at Walled Lake Northern! Thank you to everyone who came. 

Below is a video of our performance at the event. The video is unlisted on Youtube so you cannot search for it - you have to have the link below to see our performance. I apologize for the quality - I am far from a professional!!

 Then continuing on our great month, our Twitter Account won a contest!! There was a contest put on by a twitter account that celebrates Children Picture Books. By retweeting their contest, we won several books by Ryan T. Higgins from the Mother Bruce series! The kids were so excited and we posted this message back. Shortly after we heard back from Ryan T. Higgins himself! If you are not following us on Twitter, please do! You can find us at username: @wearetheweckies - lots of great things are posted on our Twitter from this year you can also view.

Last but not least, last Friday afternoon we had a special BMX Bike Assembly as a celebration for the school for raising over $13,000 with our Fall Fundraiser (cookie dough and entertainment books). We got to watch this great show outdoors while learning about safety when biking, skateboarding or scootering!

Our very brave principal, Mr. Drewno, having a bike go right over him!

Readers' Workshop:
In Readers' Workshop there has been a lot of activity and change! I spent the first few weeks of the month doing reading assessments with several of our students. Many are making great growth already in their reading, writing and spelling... yay! I have reconfigured the groups and we will resume our meetings after the Thanksgiving Break. Thank you for your patience with this. The reading assessments are detailed and time consuming, yet so very valuable for us to continue instruction!  As many of you have seen, your child's iReady Reading Assessment information has come home and this provides us with even more data about what and how to instruct your child with as a reader.

In Workshop we have been busy!!! Each Friday students have the opportunity to log two books they have been reading from the week in their Book Logs. As readers' it is important to keep track of what we have read and to review the books we read. Then each reader has time to "Shop for new books" from our classroom library. Each child knows which leveled books in the classroom are just-right for them as well as how many they should collect for the following week. Additionally we have several hundreds of non-leveled books that the kids can select from as well. All of these books are in labeled baskets and we have been taking time learning how to properly return these books when we are done to the right basket.

Mini-Lessons in Readers' Workshop the past few weeks have included:

• I can use every bit of info that a book gives me, to help me figure out what words mean.
• I can read smoothly and when I hit a bump, I can reread for fluency.
• When I'm stuck and lose parts of the story, I can go back and retell the big parts of the story.
• I can predict and ask myself questions as I read the story.
• I can visualize the parts of a story as I read.
• I can find and collect new words from the books I read.
• I can infer to better understand the author's message.
• I can make connections to the story as I read.

Writers' Workshop:
We have a room full of young authors! You read that right! After studying in depth our Mentor Author, Kevin Henkes, we have been taking many of his writing craft styles and creating our own picture books. Mini-Lessons in Workshop have included:

• I can plan a story about a personified character with a problem.
• I can consider my audience and create an interesting lead for them.
• I can use the rule of three in my story.
• I can use quotation marks or a speech bubble to show dialogue in my story.
• I can use the "show don't tell" technique to interest my readers.
• I can use adjectives in my story to give details.
• I can end my story with closure.

We are now at the point where we are learning to edit and revise our stories! It has been fun in writing conferences to see what each child is writing about and capable of creating.

Word Study:
Many of the components addressed on the iReady Reading assessment are areas we focus on in Word Study. We have done lessons on the following topics:

• Prefixes and root words
• Syllables in words
• Vowels followed by 'r'
• The 'y' sound in words
• The 'ooh' and 'oo' sounds in words
• Past tense in words and adding 'ed' endings

Math Workshop:
In Math we just wrapped up our second unit of study! Many brought home their Unit 2 Assessments this week. Again, these documents have to be returned to school via district policies on testing. If your Unit 2 test did not come home and you would like to see it, please let me know and we can set up a time to meet or I can have it readily available at parent teacher conferences on December 14th. Thank you for understanding. Unit 3 tests will come home again for all with the hope that all are returned.

Lessons in Workshop have included:

• Adding doubles
• Combinations of ten (what numbers can you add together to make 10)
• Using double ten frames to represent numbers and how you can show the same number many different ways on a double tens frame.
• The Making 10 Strategy
• The Near Doubles Strategy
• The Turn Around Rule for Addition
• Recognizing Numbers on a Domino
• Odd and Even Patterns
• Even and Odd Addends
• Name Collection Boxes
• Frames and Arrows and their rules
• Fact Families for addition and subtraction

 Games have included:

• Fishing for 10 
• Two-Fisted Penny Addition 
• The Number Grid Game 
• Fact Triangles (addition and subtraction)
• Salute! 
• Name that Number 

Please remember also that on the back of your child's Everyday Folder is a card for access onto the Everyday Math Online account. If you go via the Dublin Homepage (it works best) under "For Students" you can find a link right to our class. You simply have your child input their information and you can click to play math games. These are many of the games we are using in class and a great way to reinforce and strengthen number sense. 

Lastly in Math, we have been working hard on two very challenging STEM projects! The dynamics behind the STEM project is that the students are having to work on a very challenging problem solving type activity, in a group. It has been eye opening to watch some students struggle with this - and to be honest - it has been really good for some of the kids to struggle because things are typically pretty easy for them! Groups have had to have patience, learn to be resilient when faced with a challenge, let everyone participate and listen to different ideas and viewpoints in the groups. Neither object has been completed yet, but we are close!

Science:
Science has definitely been a hot subject as of late! Our scientists are loving studying plants! We have all sorts of things growing in the room and each one has been planted and maintained all by the kids. You should have had a cup of grass and alfalfa come home this week. We finished up our discovery on grass and alfalfa (weeds) and wanted to make sure these came home before they dried up for the season!

Our primary focus has been on the Brassica plant. The Brassica is unique because it grows rapidly and demonstrates all of the plant parts we have been learning about (roots, stem, leaves, flower, bud, seed pod and seeds). Each child has grown a Brassica and many have successfully pollinated across themselves to then produce a seed pod. We will now stop watering our Brassica plants and let them dry out over the Thanksgiving holiday. The idea is that once they are dry, we can harvest the seeds from the pods and plant the new seeds to start the cycle once more!

These are our Brassica plants drying out so we can harvest the seeds.

Additionally as the unit is titled "New Plants" we have been taking clippings from plants and watching them grow into new plants. All of our clippings you all sent in are alive and well and new roots have grown off of the stems. Our scientists have been making observations in their science logs and have been carefully charting progress and growth! Additionally we are growing new plants from wheat seeds, garlic cloves and potatoes... stay tuned!

Social Studies:
Social Studies has been on the back burner lately while our Science Kit has been here! We have been learning about communities and this week spent time talking about the three different types of communities: urban (big city), suburban (us), rural (farming) and the different features and characteristics of each. We even talked about the pros and cons of living, working and playing in each community. Lastly the kids had to select if they could choose, which community they would live in, work in and play in of those three choices. It was fun to see what many said and why!

Important News and Reminders:

• Please sign up for Parent Teacher Conferences on December 14th. We have a shortened half day of school that day - a half day dismissing one hour earlier than a normal half day to make time for PTC. If you are needing help using Skyward to sign up, please contact the Dublin office ASAP.  
• No School - Thursday, November 23 and Friday, November 24th: Have a fantastic Thanksgiving Break. 

We all have so much to be thankful for - I am so thankful for your children and your support each and every day! Thank you for giving me the opportunity to work with the best kids in WLCSD. Happy Thanksgiving!  :-) Jen Weckstein

 

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday 204 Families!!

We have been super busy lately in Second Grade and just having the BEST time learning and growing together!! This group is pretty fabulous...maybe I'm bias but they truly have been doing a really great job as a class lately and I'm one proud teacher. Thanks to everyone who came out to Walled Lake Northern for the homecoming parade - we had a great time showing our Dublin School Spirit!

Now, there is lots of learning to tell you about, so let's get going!


Readers' Workshop:
In Workshop LOTS has been happening over the past few weeks. Learning goals have included:

Strategies to make us better readers:

• I can stop and re-read when something doesn't make sense.
• I can take care of my reading partnerships by using my listening skills.
• I can plan ways to read with my partner.
• I can talk with my partner about our reading.
• My partner and I can solve our own problems.
• I can use reading strategies to tackle unknown words
• I can use a book log to keep track of my reading and I can write thoughtful comments in my log about the books I have read.

Each day we have used these targets as our focus for instruction. Students have built up to about 25 minutes of independent reading stamina where I can count on all reader's to be "Wow" readers. With partners we are up to about 20 minutes of solid reading. What happens while the kids are reading?

Mrs. Weckstein has started our guided reading groups! Each child has a reading book bag in a bright color. The bag is where your child will need to keep their book, reading forms, group schedule and anything else work wise that might come home for reading. Please pay attention to the schedule indicating which days I will see your child. Please make sure that they are doing this reading with an adult, not simply on their own. Please be sure to sign the reading form once you have finished the reading task so that Mrs. Weckstein knows it has been completed.

Last week we launched our groups but our couple of days off this week has thrown our groups off schedule. I anticipate with Halloween early next week, groups will not be resumed until Wednesday. After that we should be able to be pretty consistently meeting on scheduled days. Thanks for being flexible with this!

Writer's Workshop

In Writer's Workshop we have just completed our Poetry Unit! We wrapped up the unit with a fun Halloween Poem for the hallway. The writers' in this unit have learned to do so much with poetry, it was fun to see them show this off in their Haunted House Poetry! Writers' have learned to use: alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification, show not tell, line breaks, repetition and more! Be sure to stop by the hallway and check out this last published piece of poetry.

Please look for a packet of poetry work to come home with your child in the next week or so. There will be a lot! Please take time to look through this packet with your child and celebrate all that they have created and learned to do. I know that they will be just as eager to share with you as they have been to share with me and their classmates here! In their packet you will also find a rubric of what your child should have learned to do in this unit, and should be demonstrated in their work. Feel free to use this to help encourage them to write poetry at home. With poetry having very few rules, it's a great writing style they can continue to use at home and at school this year.

Math Workshop

We have been learning all sorts of great things in math these past few weeks. We have been doing a ton with different strategies for addition: adding doubles, adding combinations of ten, using double tens frames to make ten, and using what we know from doubles to help do doubles plus one facts. You'll be sure to see lots of addition practice coming home in Math Journal pages, Homelinks, Exit Slips and practice sheets. Topics we have covered include:

• Turn Around Rule for Addition
• Even and Odd Numbers
• Doubles Facts
• Addition Number Stories

Then this week we did a challenging Open Response problem. Students are very comfortable with the Turn Around Rule for Addition (3 + 4 is the same as 4 + 3). Students were first asked to create their own Subtraction Number Story and then solve the problem with an illustration and a number model. On the flip side they were asked if the Turn Around Rule can apply to subtraction. They had to use the number model from their self-created problem to prove it works or does not work, and then explain this with words. Let me tell you, this was TOUGH!!! Lots of conversation, lots of time to share ideas with partners and then off they wen to work. The fun of the Open Response is that we spend two days grappling with a tricky problem like this. On Day Two the students got partnered up and had to share their work with their partner and discuss their findings. They were then given time with a colored pencil to modify their response based on any new info they gained from their partnership. It was VERY interesting to see what they came up with when we shared in the end of the lesson!

Science

We are having SO MUCH FUN being botanists!! We have been planting and planting and planting and planting!! Thank you so much to everyone who sent in plant clippings! We are eagerly watching them regrow roots and grow a new plant. In our science activities we have planted several things. Each botanist is currently growing a brassica plant. The brassica is awesome because it grows rapidly so we can see the life cycle pretty quickly. Students have been taking care of their plants with water and light daily. Next our scientists have planted grass and alfalfa sprouts. The scenario we are setting up is to make it look like a lawn - grass and weeds! More to come with what we will be doing there, however, the kids did love mowing their lawns this week as the grass is growing fast. Later this week we planted garlic bulbs in hopes to create another type of new plant. To be continued...

Social Studies

Our first unit in Social Studies is all about our community. We have spent time lately talking about the groups within our community and our roles in the community we play in different groups (i.e. church, soccer, dance, etc.) Next we moved on to talk about our families and the importance of our family in our community. Coming soon we will be learning about the different types of communities: urban, suburban and rural, and deciding which community we would want to live in if we could choose and why!

Important Info/Reminders:

-October 31st - Halloween Parties in the classroom at 10:45-11:45am. We have awesome parents who will be running our party. We ask if more parents want to come, that you offer to help in the classroom with the party as the more who help, the more we can do! Please remember to send your child with their costume to school this day - no weapons please.

-October 31st - Half Day of School

-November 7th - No School - Election Day

A few other fun shots... Main Moose, Reporter, Extra PBIS Recess...