READING
Our new readers' workshop schedule has proven to be a great success. I am able to meet with every student for guided reading instruction four times a week!!! Our focus at this point has been targeted on fluency, reading punctuation, literal comprehension, constructed responses to our reading, and in some cases-how to tackle new words. This is an amazing block of time where students are actively exploring with words, writing, using short and long vowels in different ways, listening to reading, reflecting on reading and even more.
MATH
We have just completed Unit 5 assessment covering tables and data. This unit has also begun our counting by 3's as well. Each unit targets a specific skill and sometimes more than one skill. However, we are continuously practicing counting by 1's, 2's, 5's, 10's, and now 3's. We also continue to practice telling time, working with money, place value, math facts, and a variety of number stories.
SCIENCE
We have unfortunately completed our unit on force and motion. This unit was a blast!!! Your second grader did an amazing job navigating through different possibilities to engage an object in motion. We learned how force affects motion and how we can control the motion an object takes on, at times.
We will now be moving into a unit called pebbles, sand, and silt after vacation.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Stay tuned for ways you can help us with our next social studies unit covering neighborhoods. 😊
WRITING
Thank you to all of you for your support in our persuasive writing unit. We have now been practicing opinion writing which is very similar. Along with our focus on writing with supporting details, we are also practicing to write paragraphs including indentations and on topic support throughout this unit.
MORNING MEETING
As you all know by now-morning meeting brings a lot of different skills to us through calendar, greeting, a daily activity, and morning message. Over the last several weeks we have observed and collected data while watching a nail change dramatically as it sits in a jar of water on our window sill. As you can imagine, this is a must see every day! However recently we not only noticed a change in the nail but also the water. It was going away! Well we caught the moment and made it a teachable moment. We brought evaporation into our morning meeting through these observations as well as an activity called mystery text. Each student had a different short article, glossary page, photograph, phrases, diagrams and more telling in so many ways what evaporation is.
Forming small groups, students were responsible for reading their new information and reporting out to their team what it was about. In the end, each group reported out and we all learned a whole lot about evaporation. The class thought it was so cool to learn so much from their friends just by listening.
