Thursday, March 1, 2012
Guided Reading Performance of Rats, Bats and Black Pudding
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Exhibition Milestone Information
Milestone #1 - Thursday, March 1st = Resources that will be used to learn more about their exhibition topic.
Milestone #2 - Thursday, March 22nd = 15 facts about your topic.
Milestone #3 - Thursday, May 17th = COMPLETED visual aids, whether they are on a thumb drive for PowerPoint or presentation poster board.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
Math Link: Online Interactive Money and Time Practice
This is a great website with learning games for your child to practice key academic skills. I especially like the interactive money and time games. Enjoy!
http://www.smartygames.com
http://www.smartygames.com
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Happy New Year!
It is great to be back in our 2nd grade classroom. Here is what we are up to!
Writing: Before break, we had a lot of fun writing memoirs about our favorite family foods. We are going to be creating our first cookbook as a class. Many of you turned in recipes to share based on your child's memoir. Thank you for your help and participation. Students will be completing their final drafts of this piece. Next week, we begin our "How-To" Writing project based on something that they are good at doing. Students are sharing ideas about what they think that they are good at and gearing up to write a step-by-step book that teaches others how to do it!
Reading: We have begun reading many good books by Tomie DePaola as part of our author study this week. We are practicing writing what happened in the beginning, the middle and the end. The middle is the hardest for students to remember, because so much happens in the middle! The key to getting the middle is to first write about the beginning and the end. Then we ask ourselves, "What is the most important part that happened in between?" This is a great way to practice retelling, an important reading comprehension skill. You will see retelling questions on next weeks Reading Response Log questions.
Mathematics: We have been practicing with coins and dollars to understand how to make change. Each student in class has a Ziploc bag full of various coins to practice making change. Our goal is to know how to exhange money as well. For example, I get 30 cents in change back. What are three ways I can show 30 cents with coins? I encourage all families to use coins this way. Also, a great way to extend this lesson at home is to set out coins for your child to count everyday. Ask them to show you different ways to create 77 cents, for example. This will reinforce a key skill that requires much practice.
Homework: This week we have begun a new positive reinforcement for homework completion called "Homework Club." Students who turn in their homework in the morning get recognized every morning and receive a brightly colored bracelet (and much applause). At dismissal, students return their bracelet and get a bonus point for being responsible. If a student needs extra practice with a homework problem, they still get credit, but need to re-do the problem based on any notes that I make on their papers.
Charitable Actions: Our school is participating in the Pennies for Patients project this year! The collected coins help children in St. Jude's Hospital. Please send any change that you would like your child to give in our Pennies for Patients class box. I look forward to announcing how much we raise to help the children of St. Jude as a class!
Writing: Before break, we had a lot of fun writing memoirs about our favorite family foods. We are going to be creating our first cookbook as a class. Many of you turned in recipes to share based on your child's memoir. Thank you for your help and participation. Students will be completing their final drafts of this piece. Next week, we begin our "How-To" Writing project based on something that they are good at doing. Students are sharing ideas about what they think that they are good at and gearing up to write a step-by-step book that teaches others how to do it!
Reading: We have begun reading many good books by Tomie DePaola as part of our author study this week. We are practicing writing what happened in the beginning, the middle and the end. The middle is the hardest for students to remember, because so much happens in the middle! The key to getting the middle is to first write about the beginning and the end. Then we ask ourselves, "What is the most important part that happened in between?" This is a great way to practice retelling, an important reading comprehension skill. You will see retelling questions on next weeks Reading Response Log questions.
Mathematics: We have been practicing with coins and dollars to understand how to make change. Each student in class has a Ziploc bag full of various coins to practice making change. Our goal is to know how to exhange money as well. For example, I get 30 cents in change back. What are three ways I can show 30 cents with coins? I encourage all families to use coins this way. Also, a great way to extend this lesson at home is to set out coins for your child to count everyday. Ask them to show you different ways to create 77 cents, for example. This will reinforce a key skill that requires much practice.
Homework: This week we have begun a new positive reinforcement for homework completion called "Homework Club." Students who turn in their homework in the morning get recognized every morning and receive a brightly colored bracelet (and much applause). At dismissal, students return their bracelet and get a bonus point for being responsible. If a student needs extra practice with a homework problem, they still get credit, but need to re-do the problem based on any notes that I make on their papers.
Charitable Actions: Our school is participating in the Pennies for Patients project this year! The collected coins help children in St. Jude's Hospital. Please send any change that you would like your child to give in our Pennies for Patients class box. I look forward to announcing how much we raise to help the children of St. Jude as a class!
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Literacy Stations
It is amazing what we do in one class day in 2nd grade. We arrive to the classroom and quietly put away our book bag, and then silently begin to read. We come together in morning meeting, celebrate and share, and then we discuss the agenda of the day. After morning meeting, we discuss phonics at 9:00 and then our class is broken into groups of students working in stations, small groups centered on specific learning activities. We are either in our reading group, listening to books at the listening center, at the computers where we engage with language learning technology, or doing hands-on word work at our seats that help us understand how words are made, how they are used, how they are spelled and just about anything important you can imagine with how we use or comprehend language. By 10:00 we switch gears to writing. We get out our composition books and begin our writing lesson for the day, have a snack, and by 11 o'clock we are off to either Art, Music, Physical Education or Technology class. Then, we finally take a break at noon for lunch where we eat and relax and yet are still practicing our manners and appropriate lunch behavior. By 12:40 we are happily playing in recess, rain or shine. That's because if it rains we have an indoor recess. By 1:00 we are tuckered out and enjoy a read aloud and reading lesson and then get to read from our browsing boxes (books that we have chosen to read from our libary). This gives us some down time just to enjoy our favorite books. At 1:30 we begin our math study for the day and by 2:30 we are either in Science class or Social Studies. Whew! Our day moves fast and we learn a lot, every day! Every night we have our vocabulary homework so that we can learn at least 101 new words in the 2nd grade. Math homework begins this week so we will also be practicing what we learned in our math lesson Monday-Friday.
We have a lot of fun learning! Check out some of our class pictures so far!
We have a lot of fun learning! Check out some of our class pictures so far!
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
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