Week 3 News

          Week 3 News

            Group A:  Bring library books Monday!

Dear Families,

The kids are settling in so nicely and are showing me that they are comfortable with our routines and procedures.  I’m proud of them!

Here are some of the things we worked on this week:

*We read a Scholastic News magazine about GROWTH MINDSET.  This led to a great discussion about saying, “I can’t do it…….YET!”  We all thought that sticking with something, rather than giving up, is the way to go.

*We practiced long e words and also reviewed long a words. Through spelling we are fitting in extra handwriting practice.

*We practiced several letters in our printing power workbooks, particularly the letters a and g.  I reminded students that these letters start with the “magic c.”  This formation helps them a lot when they use it consistently.  We are also reviewing good handwriting posture, with our non-writing hand holding the paper to add stability.

*In math we are doing math boxes every day.  Math boxes review a variety of important foundational skills.  Right now many students need support with this work, as they get reacquainted with these concepts from first grade.  Our lessons focused on “near doubles” facts and telling time, fact families and addition work.  We also played a dice game to reinforce tally marks, addition and writing number models. Students loved a chance to explore shapes with geoboards as well.

*During reading workshop I finished one-on-one reading assessments.  Second graders practiced independent reading and also did 10 minutes of Lexia each day to help them meet their weekly goal. After read aloud they completed written book responses about their favorite part of a story.  We are beginning to have good discussions about what quality work is and what it looks like!

*Our writing workshops really took off this week and students got their writing folders and tiny topic notepads. We read two mentor texts, The Leaving Morning and Owl Moon, that both showcase special small moment narratives. We played a game to help us understand a watermelon (large, general topic) vs. a seed (small, narrow topic) story.  Our goal is to write small moment narratives where we zoom in on something that happened to us. Kids jotted down ideas in their tiny topic notebooks and began writing their first piece.  I always model these steps for them as part of the lesson.  They enjoy the chance to listen to some of my small moment stories before they work on their own. 

*Next week I will continue to send a page of review work and books for the home days.  I strongly encourage students to do 10-15 minutes of Lexia on each of those home days.  Expectations for the home days will increase the following week but will not be more than two hours of work.  It will be a mix of online and paper/pencil work.  I will send work and books home in a plastic envelope so students have what they need for any non-computer based work.

We read Owl Moon by Jane Yolen and wrote about our favorite parts.

Writing Workshop!

The kids enjoyed some watercolor painting.

Book Response on Owl Moon

We  played a dice game to practice math skills.

Bird art project with Mrs. Devin

We had a little nature walk and looked for signs of animals.

Geoboard exploration was a big hit!

Tiny Topic Notepad!

Writer hard at work

Another focused writer!