I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the parents for coming to Curriculum Night. It was a great opportunity for me to share with you what your children will be experiencing this year in Second Grade. I enjoyed meeting all of you and look forward to working closely with you this year in order to help your children be successful learners.
This week students worked very hard and learned a wealth of knowledge. During Daily 5, I was extremely impressed with the students as they worked towards building stamina for Read to Someone. Students achieved 15 minutes of stamina. We are currently up to 21 minutes for Read to Self and will continue to work next week on meeting our stamina goals. It was wonderful to observe students talking about what was happening in the books they were reading, checking for understanding and even laughing when arriving at a humorous part of the story. I was a very proud teacher! Next week will be learning a few other ways to Read to Someone and we will also be introducing Listen to Reading.
During our Literacy Block students have been engaged in a myriad of activities. Students learned about the following strategies: Monitor and Fix Up, Voracious Reading and Using Background Knowledge to Connect with Text (Text-to-Self Connections). These new tools for reading will continue to be a focus as students are reading independently throughout the year. Mrs. Ensign worked with students during our Literacy Block time this week so that I could take time to read with students and identify their levels. The assessment given will help me to identify the needs of each student. It will also give me a glimpse of whether students will need to focus on comprehension, accuracy, fluency or expanding vocabulary for their initial reading goals. Students continued to work with words and focus on specific patterns through the use of Words Their Way. This week the focus was on sorting their words and placing them in the correct categories. The students also independently wrote their word sorts in their words study notebook. Students are improving in this area and seem to be learning the routines very quickly.
The students participated in their first Explorations lesson and did an amazing job for their first time. Students got to practice some of the routines that they will need to know as we begin Guided Math. Students also began reviewing for the Unit 1 test by playing Jeopardy. Next week we will start Guided Math.
In Science, we have wrapped up our mini-unit on the Scientific Method. We learned the 7 steps of the Scientific Method: and even did some fun experiments! We did a paper towel experiment and learned that Bounty paper towels are not very absorbent and Clarissa paper towels are the most absorbent! We also experiemented with how to make our teachers spin. On Wednesday, we did an egg drop experiement, which resulted in an egg explotion!
In Writing, we have been brainstorming ideas for Writer’s Workshop. We went on an idea hunt around the school and outside to collect ideas. We are very excited to start writing next week!!!
