Working hard!

     Writing-

     We have our Writers Workshop up and running! It is exciting to see the students working on writing each day. We only did free writing this week, but will be starting an actual writing unit next week.

     Each day I try to call back 2 small groups of writers to do conferences with. This week our focus was punctuation and capitalization. As the year goes on we will focus on word usage, adding ideas, and publishing their work. 

Hard at work during writing

Using the Dictionary!

One of my writing groups

hard at work.

During reading we have started working with a reading partner so a big focus this week was working at a Level 1 whisper voice when working with a buddy.

We also worked on metacognition (thinking about our thinking/reading) using wordless picture books. The kids "read" a book with their group and then posted their thinking using our thinking stems (I predict, I wonder, I noticed...)

Working together to read a book

Using their metacognition

Pictures of their thinking about the wordless books 

"When I read Flora and the Flamingo I was wondering why she wanted to be a flamingo."

Every day during reading we have been doing some SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) working on our reading stamina. The goal is 15 minutes each day so that students are reading their own book that they can then write to me about. 

Part of our discussion was that students need to pick good fit books. These books shouldn't be so easy that they speed through them or so hard that they struggle to get through each page. 

I brought in different types of shoes to show that each book has a purpose (golfing, running, or (my favorite idea from a kiddo) date night). We also talked about how it was too hard for me to walk in Mr. Cox's shoes and our student shoe was too small for me so they weren't good fits. 

A big part of LEAD21 is doing research and inquiry. This week the students looked through our first theme readers and chose some ideas for research projects for our first unit.

Finally, because we couldn't go outside this week we have been doing some brain breaks in the classroom. I snapped a couple of pictures of one of the dances, it was so fun to watch and they were so much more focused afterwards!

2nd Grade Smiles

Welcome to our blog! My goal is to post pictures and updates to our blog every 2 weeks, but it may be even more often! I will also still email parents as important events and reminders occur, but please check back to the blog for information about what is happening in our classroom!

 In Math we have been working hard on expectations for partner work and math games. The students have played number top-it and rich robots (counting coins). 
In small group I have been doing some baseline checking for understanding so I can create math groups. We have worked on counting coins and making change in different ways (25 cents as a quarter or 2 dimes and a nickel or 5 nickels) and using a number line to count backwards and forwards. 

Playing number top-it

+1/+2 Spinner Game

 As a class we have been working on classroom expectations and personal responsibility. Each morning the students first job was to answer a "big idea" question. We discussed what students should do and what the teacher should do in order for us to have a successful and positive year.  The kids were so wonderful at coming up with ideas and it gave them ownership of our classroom since all of our expectations came from them!

We have started up our Writer's Workshop. One of the things that we did was create heart maps about what things we know a lot about. These maps will be put into their writing folders so that they have ideas for writing all year long.

 READING! WOW! We have had some wonderful and deep conversations this week with reading. We talked about how to pick a book to fit our needs. 

We have talked about metacognition which is thinking about your thinking. We have discussed how when we read books we need to be constantly thinking about the book and making connections. 

After students read on Thursday they put up a sticky note for me to read so that I would know what they were thinking about while they were reading that day.

We also set reading goals for this year. Some students did goals for types of books they wanted to read this year and others focused on reading fluently or working on comprehension. It was so fun to see what kinds of goals students thought up to set for themselves.

Reading books so I can 

make my own books

I want to read about trucks 

because they interest me