Happy Weekend! We had a great week as always in our classroom. I continue to be so proud of this group of amazing students for their hard work and their love for learning. Don't forget, there is no school on Monday January 18th due to Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
Reading
We continue to work on fluency in our reading. We have been paying close attention to how we make our voices match the mood of the story. We have also been making sure that we take the initiative to reread when something sounds wrong or doesn't make sense. We also focused on reading at a just right pace this week. As the year progresses I continue to be blown away with the progress each reader in this room has made.
Writing
We have started planning our fictional stories. We have taken the time to brainstorm then plan out our thoughts. We've made sure that we know our characters and their roles in the story, the setting or settings, the problem, the solution and what lesson we are trying to teach our audience. We have also worked very hard on hooking the audience right from the very beginning. It is so amazing to see how we can go back and edit just our introduction with help from an editing partner. As a mentor text we are reading 'James and the Giant Peach' by Roald Dahl. This is such an exciting unit in our room!
Word Work
Word work has become so exciting this week because we have started running word work just like we run all of the other subjects. Students now have multiple centers each day during word work where they can really learn their rules of the week and apply them in various ways. We've even included a handwriting center! This part of our day has really transformed and the students have a true love for their daily word work.
Science
We had our liquid race experiment and the students started talking about variables in science experiments and how they can change results. We looked at the ripples in the tin foil race track and planned changes for following experiments. This showed the students how important multiple trials are during science experiments. The questions from this experiment are guiding us into our next experiment.
Math
This week we learned a fun new math game called 'Beat the Calculator' which helped us see that our brains actually work faster than a calculator for basic math facts. The students loved this game and it was a great way to work on math facts and numbers through 50. We also had some groups who took the challenge of numbers through 100! This game really taught us that for some math problems it is better just to use our brain. We will be working with money next week and making change. We have also spent time reviewing for our midyear assessment. The students have done so well with this!
Dragonfly News
Thank you to those of you who have already signed up for Mystery Reader dates! We spent morning meetings this week talking about MLK Day. We talked about how it is not physical appearance that defines a person. We read many books about Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and events that took place in our history. The students cared so much about this topic and it was amazing to have these conversations as a whole group. With Mrs. Griffith this week, we talked about safety when you are with a babysitter or home alone with older siblings. We also talked about hashtags this week and how they sum up a big idea into a small phrase. We will be using hashtags during our lessons now so students can clearly see the main focus of the lesson! We also have a hashtag of the day. Developmentally this is great for second grade because it clearly states the main idea in a fun way!
No comments:
Post a Comment