Happy Friday!

Happy Friday!

What a great first FULL week of second grade that I have enjoyed with your student!  We have been working extremely hard on establishing station routines during math and reading.  Also, we continue to talk about carpet expectations and expectations during work time.  We have been teaching and reinforcing these expectations throughout the day and students receive stickers for doing their job.  Last week, I wrote home about that the students have sticker charts & once they get a full sticker chart they have a choice of what they want to do.  Below is their choice board.

Maggie chose to read to the class as her sticker chart reward.  She read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 

What's Going on in 2nd Grade!

• Math
• This week, was the first week of actually starting math stations and establishing routines and expectations.  During math, there are 3 stations that your child will visit each day: teacher station (direct instruction on the objective), independent practice station (student practices the learning objective), and game station (students play a game with a peer that reinforces math topic or plays ST Math or online games on the laptop).  This week our focus was on solving problems using different strategies (number line, picture, tally marks, etc.).
• Next week, we will be focusing on identifying and counting coins.  Your child should already be able to identify and count pennies by themselves.  On Monday, we will focus on dimes and counting coins that have dimes and pennies.  On Wednesday, we will talk about nickels and count coins that have dimes, pennies, and nickels.  When counting coins we will focus on that sorting the coins and starting to count with the biggest value first.  
• Writing
• This week, our focus was continuing to increase our writing stamina.  The students wrote a creative story of "How Mrs. Ross or Ms. Mottaz Spent Her Summer Vacation" and reading the book How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Mark Teague.  These stories turned out great and we are turning them into a classroom book!  We also started a new routine of writing to our Star Student during the writing rotation during our reading block.  
• Next week, we will be starting our first unit of writing a small moment story.  A small moment story (personal narrative) is a story where the main character is yourself and lasts no more than two hours.  The students will have a chance to brainstorm 5 different story ideas, share these stories with a writing partner, and choose the BEST story for their small moment.  By the end of next week, we will actually be writing our first process writing piece in 2nd grade!!
• Reading
• This week, was also the first week of starting reading stations.  There are five reading stations each day: reading, reading skill, writing, science/social studies, and word study (spelling).  At the reading skill station, a teacher is with the group focusing on a reading comprehension skill that is our focus for the week.  At the word study station, on Monday (or first day of the week) a teacher teaches the students the spelling words/pattern for the week and for the rest of the week the students work independently on learning this pattern/skill.  At the science/social studies station, the focus is learning about different science or social studies topics through literacy.
• Next week, our reading skill focus will be on completing a bookmark independently on a book that was read.  This week, we introduced a fiction and nonfiction book that was completed on books that were read to the class.  On a fiction bookmark the student must identify the problem/solution of the book and on a nonfiction bookmark the student must identify two facts that they learned while reading the book.  Once a bookmark is completed, an adult meets with the student to talk with him/her about the book.  So next week, we will focusing on the students reading to understand and filling out these bookmarks on books that they have read independently from our classroom library.

• Social Studies
• This week, we introduced a variety of U.S. symbols and the students read about these symbols, learned a cool fact, and were able to color these symbols.
• Next week, they will read a book called American Symbols.  After reading the book, the students will identify at least two facts about each symbol.
• Word Study
• This week, our focus was on teaching the word study activities.  So the students had four words that they were working on spelling: their first name, last name, Mrs. Ross and Ms. Mottaz.  We talked about that all these words are proper nouns and the importance of capitalizing the first letter.
• Next week, we are continuing to focus on the students being able to independently complete the word study activities.  These activities include: writing sentences using their spelling words, writing their spelling words in rainbow or ghost words, writing their spelling words in bubble letters, and a spelling graffiti activity.  Next week's practice words are from the trick words that they learned to read in first grade: you, the, his, into, and has.

Library Checkout & Free Read Friday!

Today was our first library checkout day and the students were so excited!!!  They discovered that as second graders they are able to checkout books from anywhere in the library.  We had a discussion about making good choices of books that they choose.  After library checkout the students were able to free read throughout the classroom - I have never seen such happy students to get to curl up with a good book and read (which just made my heart happy)!!! :)

Special Reader...Mrs. Neale!

On Thursday, Mrs. Neale (our new assistant principal) came in and read to us two of her favorite beginning of the year books.  Since she was a music teacher previously they were both books that included music.  She read Pete the Cat Rocking in His School Shoes and The Remarkable Adventures of Farkle McBride.  It was so much fun to have Mrs. Neale as a visitor and to hear the kids sing along with her as she read.  We have already had a request for her to come back in with more "music books."

 I hope that you have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Ross