Reading and Writing All Day Long

This week is an amazing example of how we read and write all day long in 2nd grade. We have incorporated Social Studies and Science into our literacy time, so now the only time kids aren't reading a book or writing about their learning is when we are doing math. Even during math we have journals that they write in though, so it really is an all day thing!

In Social Studies we have started learning about different communities. The students read through my community books and pulled out what they noticed as they read through them.

We will be starting up our inquiry projects soon, so students needed to come up with questions. A lot of their questions were "easy answers" or yes/no, so we did a quick lesson on thick and thin questions.

As part of our spelling we are putting key words up onto the word wall. Students are then supposed to use these words when they are writing similar words (thump, stump, trumpet).

Please excuse the sloppy anchor chart, we made it together and I haven't copied our nice one to put up on the wall yet!

Sharing their weekend news. We practiced giving compliments about writing.

Sharing their weekend news. We practiced giving compliments about writing.

Reading groups. We started our theme readers and practiced reading along with our partner to help if they said the wrong word or got stuck on a word.

One of the math games we learned this week was Beat the Calculator. Students took turns being the calculator, the brain, and the caller. We learned from this game that it is usually quicker to use our brain and not rely on the calculator! This has really been helpful as we have started learning our addition strategies +1, doubles, and +9 facts.

These girls are working on their math journals. We journal each day in math so that the teacher can see what each child did during math game time.

 In literacy our focus vocabulary was community. We researched what we thought was in each community. We learned that each community needs places for people to live, work, play, and solve problems. The kids worked in groups to plan and create a community. 

September 6th, 2013

With a super-fast short week I fell behind in the picture taking department. So please excuse the wordy post for today. J

Writing this week we did a lot of free write. I want kids to get used to writing for 15-20 minutes each day. We did start our study of fiction writing on Friday. We will be exploring the parts of fiction books and then working to write our own fiction stories to publish.

In reading this week we continued work on our stamina in reading. The students have to have 2 good-fit books on their desks each day. Then we discussed that stamina is real reading (eyes in books, reading words, not talking) and practiced working to get our independent reading stamina up. We have made it to 15 minutes! That is what I want us to be able to do each day so that everyone is practicing reading and also has something to write to me about in their reading response journals.

We also talked about schema this week and how that is using what we already know from past experiences. We created a schema chart as a class, and then each child filled in their own schema head. It was great to see what each child thought they knew a lot about!

In math we finished up our first chapter, which was a lot of review and gave me a lot of good information on how to sort out math groups. We did our first math test on Friday and the kids did wonderfully on it!

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 

Countdown to First Grade E-I

We have had so much fun counting down to First Grade! The students can't quite wrap their brain around the fact that they are going to be First Graders. :)

 

For E we had Extra Recess. The kids loved being outside for the extra couple of minutes! I am so glad that Spring has finally arrived so we could enjoy it.

 

F was visit a First Grade Classroom. Before going the students wrote up questions that they wanted to ask the First Grade students, and we did little interviews. After learning all about First Grade they wrote about what they were excited to do next year, and we worked on writing thank you notes to the classes that let us come in.

 

 

G was the most exciting day for the students! They actually got to chew gum in the classroom!!! At the end of the day we watched a short video about how gum is made and then everyone tried to blow bubbles. Unfortunately Mrs. Cox got the wrong kind of gum for blowing, but quite a few students were able to get theirs to blow! We made a graph of who could and could not blow bubbles with their gum.



I love their looks of concentration as they try to blow
bubbles!

H was Hat Day and almost everyone remembered to bring their hats in. They loved wearing their hats throughout the day. During Math we practiced counting, tallying, and graphing with the different types of hats. We also read Caps for Sale.

Graphing their hats

I was a wonderful treat! We got to eat Ice Cream! We all sat and enjoyed an Ice Cream Sandwich to get ready for our weekend. :)