Tuesday, March 19, 2013

*Just a reminder...we DO have school this Friday, March 22nd. We do NOT have school on Monday, April 8th. Students return to school on Tuesday, April 9th.

This week's IA: Music
IA when we return from break: PE

Reader's Workshop
Students have found much joy in searching nonfiction texts for nonfiction text features. We feel like detectives when we try to find headings and subheadings. We've found that some nonfiction texts don't even have headings and subheadings. Interesting!

Writer's Workshop

Students will begin having their published writing displayed in the classroom. Here is our first set of published writers! Look at that craftsmanship and attention to detail. Bravo!

Math

We took our test on the fraction unit today. The students really enjoyed delving into the world of fractions. I can safely say that we have ALL deepened our knowledge about fractions over the last couple of weeks. 

Expedition

Before we start our Science Expedition, which we will do after break, we are working like meteorologists. Each day, we record our observations about what the sky looks like, what the air feels like, what the temperature is, what the humidity is, and what the air pressure is. Some of our data we get just from being outside. Other data we receive from weather.com. Tomorrow we will be making barometers, so we can record data from our very own weather instrument. How exciting! 

Tuesday, March 12th, 2013

We are back to our regular schedule this week, after TCAP last week.

This week's IA: Art
Next week's IA: Music

Since our schedule was so crazy last week, we ended the week on a good note. At the end of the day, we went down to Ms. Jody's classroom to meet with our Kindergarten buddies. First, we read Dr. Seuss books together. Next, we practiced some doubles cup stacking. This was a real challenge for us! To help us calm down after cup stacking, all of us practiced some yoga! What a great afternoon we had with our buddies!

Reader's Workshop
As we begin our work in science, we are focusing our reading strategies around nonfiction text. Specifically, we learning how to pay attention to and determine importance from nonfiction text features. Currently, we are reading books about weather and adding to our knowledge about weather and climate. This is connected to some work we are doing during Expedition.

Writer's Workshop
I am very excited to get the children going in our new Writer's Workshop format. I will be meeting with every child, every day during small groups in writing. This is different and we're all getting used to it. You will begin to see published pieces of writing coming home after Spring Break. While I will be sending these pieces home, I will expect that the pieces come back to school, to add to your child's portfolio. All children are currently working on descriptive writing.

Math
We are a few lessons into our fractions unit. Though these sound daunting at first, the children are really grasping the concepts around fractions. Today, we worked on equivalent fractions. We're all having fun with these math concepts!

Expedition
We have not started our full Science Expedition yet, but we are starting some of our science stand-alone studies. Today, we created a Weather Log. We will be recording weather data each day to look for patterns in weather. We are having a great time working as meteorologists. We also talked about what scientists do and how they work today. To begin our study, we talked about the Scientific Method. We learned that scientists ask questions, do background research, construct hypotheses, test hypotheses, analyze results, and share data. We love being scientists!

Monday, March 4th, 2013

Here we are, already at March 4th. How did that happen? We are ready though, to march forth :) Time just doesn't stop, does it? Even as much as we might want it to. I have so enjoyed getting to know all of your kiddos this year and look forward to sharing all of their amazing accomplishments with you at Student Led Conferences over the next couple of weeks. If you did not receive my email to sign up for a time, please let me know.

This week's IA: PE *We are climbing this week and are in need of belayers. If you have been trained, and are available to help us, we climb from 9:55-10:45, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I know other crews would appreciate your help too. So, if you can volunteer more of your time, that would be wonderful!

Next week's IA: Art

Our Winter Voyage was a HUGE success! I hope your children expressed the same sentiments! The kids did an amazing job of showing ALL of our character traits. I was so impressed with everyone. Your children will be sharing their reflections from Adventure Education with you at their student led conferences. Here are a few pictures from our time together in Larkspur.

The week before we left on our Voyage, we had the honor of presenting our findings and graphs from the Starlighting to a panel of representatives from the Castle Rock Chamber of Commerce. Better late than never. Our graphs we very well received and they are excited to use the information we collected for them to help with planning future events. Talk about an authentic purpose and audience! 

As you know, I attended a writing conference last week. I am so very excited about the changes that will be coming to our classroom in writing! I will be showing you where your child is as a writer and where they're going, during student led conferences.

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

Good snowy afternoon!

I apologize for not getting this to you yesterday. Better late than never :) Especially since there is so much important information in this week's addition.

This week's IA: Art
Next week's IA: Music

We have been busy preparing for our Voyage the last couple of days. Today, we played a game called "Airport." This game gave us a chance to practice collaboration, empathy, and trust. One student was the pilot while another student, the air traffic controller, guided the "blind" pilot down the runway using only verbal cues. After we all had a chance to participate, we talked about how we can use what we learned from this experience in the classroom and on our Voyage next week. 

Today, we also went over our gear list and talked about packing. I will be out on Monday and Tuesday at a Writing Conference. So, students will not bring their gear until next Wednesday morning. I have told the students that I am trusting that they will make sure they have packed all their gear and won't be missing any essential items. Please make sure to have their daypacks packed with a sack lunch and 2-4 snacks, packed separate from their lunch, labeled with their names. On Wednesday morning, students will leave their duffel bags and other gear outside by our bus. There will be 3 buses in the same area, as other grade are leaving the same day. Please be sure to find the sign with 2nd grade on it, and place your child's gear by the correct bus. Students should come into school with their daypacks. Plan on arriving at the normal time on Wednesday, there is no need to be early. If you have ANY questions about gear, please don't hesitate to email me. I will resend the gear list today as well. 

*In addition to the gear that is on the packing list, please write a note to your child for them to read on Wednesday night before they go to bed. These little reminders from home are a wonder to help with homesickness. You can tuck these letters in their gear bags. 

Monday, February 11th, 2013

Hello!

*Our Crew will be sharing our community poems and spirit read at All School Meeting this Wednesday morning at 9am. We would love for you to be a part of the audience, if you are able to attend!

*Our Valentine's Day Party is this Thursday at 3pm. Please have your child only put his or her name on the valentine cards in the "From" section and leave the "To" section blank. This makes passing out valentines much easier. Students will need to bring in a valentine's box on Thursday.

This week's IA: PE
Next week's IA: Art

On Friday, we created our Crew Life is Art Project that will be available during the auction at Life is Art on Saturday, March 16th.

Reader's Workshop
As we get further into 2nd grade, we will focus on supporting our thinking with examples from the text. This evidence will be visible in our Reading Journals. We are currently learning how to write complete sentences and include good conventions (capitals and end marks) in our writing during Reader's Workshop as well. We're learning how to begin our sentences with words like, "I think, I wonder, I infer, I predict..."

Writer's Workshop
Now that we've finished up our poetry genre study, we will begin learning about our next genre study, non-fiction. We will read many different examples of non-fiction text before we begin thinking about how to compose our own non-fiction piece. This will connect very well with our new science expedition, which we are also beginning soon.

Math
Our new unit is all about patterns and rules in numbers. We will review skip counting as well as continue to work on differences between 2-digit numbers. In this unit, we will also learn how to analyze data using mean, median, and mode.

Expedition

Thank you so much for supporting us last week at our Poetry Reading Night! What a wonderful evening we had. Before we launch our science expedition, we will be learning about personal financial literacy. During this brief study, we will learn about short and long term goals, as well as decisions that must be made with finances.

Monday, February 4th, 2013

Hello there!

I hope everyone got out and enjoyed the beautiful weather last weekend. I enjoyed a nice long, though brisk, thanks to the wind, walk on Saturday.

This week's IA: Music
Next week's IA: PE

*Ms. Diana is wondering if anyone can let her borrow a costume police hat for next week. She said a child's costume hat would be perfect. Please let me know if you might be able to help her out with that.

*Our Poetry Reading Night is this Thursday, 2/7, at 6pm. I am hoping that all students and their families will be able to attend. If you have any questions, please let me know. You will be receiving a sign-up genius in the next day or two for that evening. Our Crew will need drinks, plates, and napkins for that night. Also, if anyone has plastic table cloths we can borrow, that would be great! I will need 5 of them. Your children have worked so hard on their poetry about community, I can't wait for you to hear all of their hard work!

Last week during All School Meeting, Mr. Doug hosted our annual Cup Stacking Tournament. I'm very proud to announce that our very own Keanan won the tournament!! He beat every other student in the tournament. Way to go, Keanan! In class, we talked about how this proves how much perseverance pays off!

Monday, January 28th, 2013

Good afternoon!

This week's IA: Art
Next week's IA: Music

Reader's Workshop
Currently, we are paying attention to how readers infer while reading. We are reading many poems and using our background knowledge along with the text clues, to infer, or guess, what the author really means. We've discovered how much fun it can be to be detectives while reading these poems that use such great word choice. Here's an example of one of the poems we read today:
From the book, If Not for the Cat
By: Jack Prelutsky
Boneless, translucent,
We undulate, undulate,
Gelatinously.
We had to use our background knowledge and the text clues to figure out that the poem was talking about jellyfish. We also had to discuss the vocabulary of this poem. We learned the meaning of translucent and undulate.

Writer's Workshop
Since we are spending so much time reading poetry, we are trying our hands at writing poetry. Our main focus for poetry is to include descriptive words that really paint vivid pictures in our readers' minds. We have started the publishing process for our poems. Some children are choosing to publish by hand while others are choosing to publish their poems on their Kidblog sites. We will share our poetry with you at are Student Led Conferences coming up in March. Just wait until you see how descriptive our writing has become!

Math

Last week, we began using Khan Academy as a way to practice our math. The kids have been super motivated to use this tool! I hope this will help the students practice their basic math facts as well, as I've noticed that not knowing these facts has made the tougher addition and subtraction problems even harder.

Are those Legos? Yes. What do they have to do with math? Let me tell you. Today, we began learning about multiplication. We used Legos to help us begin thinking about this concept. I introduced arrays. We will be using arrays to help us visualize multiplication. Legos are perfect examples of arrays. Arrays are anything that have equal amounts of objects in a certain number of rows. So, the top Lego is an array that has 4 rows with 6 dots in each row. This is a 4x6 array and has 24 total dots. 4x6=24. The bottom Lego (same Lego turned the other way) has 6 rows with 4 dots in each row. This is a 6x4 array. 6x4=24. If you have Legos at home, this would be a great way to practice multiplication.

Expedition
As we are wrapping up our Community Expedition, we are beginning to work on our final product, community poems. We are writing poems that show all we know about community. We will perform these poems for you at a special Poetry Reading Night on Thursday, February 7th at 6pm. This will be held in our classroom and all families are invited. The students will also create a visual presentation to go along with their poetry, which we will show that evening as well. Be on the look out for a Sign-Up Genius for this night. I like to make it a very special night with hot chocolate and treats for the kids.