THREE DOWN, ONE TO GO

It’s amazing how fast the year is flying by! I guess it’s true what they say, “time flies when you’re having fun.”  While we have had a ton of fun so far this year, we have also been very busy, and that will continue for the remainder of the year.

In Reading we have finished our direct instruction on all six “Good Reader Strategies.”  Those include: predictions, connections, inferences, visualization/mental images, solving word problems, and summarizing/synthesizing.  We will continue practicing those strategies, and digging even deeper into what those look like.  Reciprocal Teaching, Guided Reading, and Readers’ Workshop will be the backbone of our instructional strategies for the rest of the year.  While we will spend A LOT of time practicing those strategies during class, it is extremely important the students are doing the same independently.  There is a lot of research that stresses the importance of independent reading for long-term academic success. The more students read on their own, the better they perform in all academic areas, all the way through high school.  I can’t stress enough, the students NEED to be reading a minimum of 100 minutes a week, and practice applying the “Good Reader Strategies” as they read.

In Writing, we are finishing up our unit on book and restaurant reviews.  The students have used what they have learned about reviews and writing opinion pieces to create some amazing reviews of books they have read and Biaggi’s Restaurant.  While the kids may have read some good books, and ate some great food at Biaggi’s, the overall goal of this unit was to give students practice backing up their opinions with specific evidence, while incorporating “Good Writer Strategies.”  The rest of the year will focus on writing nonfiction, expository pieces. We will even take a trip to the zoo, conduct an animal research project, and write an expository essay on an animal of their choice.  The upcoming Writing units will be a lot of fun!

Math is also moving along as planned.  Although we have a new curriculum, and the 2^nd grade team has worked tirelessly aligning the new curriculum with what we have used in the past, the students are developing into true mathematicians.  The new curriculum allows us to spend more time on specific content, and dig deeper into the topics covered.  This has allowed us to transform the students from memorizers of operations and math facts, into true mathematical thinkers.  On a daily basis, 2J engages in high level, intelligent mathematical conversations that allow for a deeper understanding of what is being taught.  We have just finished up our unit on measurement, and we will now be moving into fractions after break.  After that, we will wrap up the year with units on decimals, place value, and whole number operations.  We have been extremely busy in Math this year, and the same will be true for the rest of the year.

Social Studies and Science has also been staying the course.  We just finished our Science units on the plant lifecycle and the water cycle.  We will now transition into our Social Studies unit on the economy. We will then finish up the year with our Science unit on nutrition.  While we have done a number of engaging “experiments,” and incorporated Discovery Education into Social Studies and Science instruction, for the rest of the year, we will be using the SCAN strategy for reading nonfiction texts.  This will help the students gain a better understanding of how to tackle nonfiction texts, and pull out the most important information while reading.  This is an important skill the students will need to have mastered, since there will be more focus on reading nonfiction texts next year. 

It is hard to believe we only have one quarter left, but I will be sure to make the last few months of school months to remember.  While we will be extremely busy wrapping up the remaining units of study, there will be a lot of FUN incorporated into what we do every day.  It has been a great year so far, so let’s finish on a high note!

Halfway There!!!!

Can you believe we are already halfway done!  It seems like just yesterday the kids walked in my door for the first time. Then again, looking back at how far we have come, I am so proud of the 2J family.  It is amazing the growth I have witnessed firsthand, and I have high expectations for the second half of the school year.

In Reading, we have covered nearly all of the “Good Reader Strategies.” We know that good readers make connections as they read. Those connections include text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections.  Good readers make inferences and predictions, while supporting them with clues from the text and background knowledge.  We have practiced creating mental images, and using fix-up strategies to solve word problems.  Finally, good readers are able to summarize what they have read, including only the most important details and narrative elements.  Although this covers the major strategies for the year, there is still more to come.

The first half of the year has been spent providing direct instruction and guided practice on these strategies.  We will now move into a more independent practice model.  Reciprocal Teaching is an effective, research based, and highly engaging method of instruction that allows the students to practice these strategies.  Students will work in a cooperative learning group to read a common text.  Each student will be assigned a role, based on one of the strategies, and participate in a sort of literature book talk.  Much of the remainder of the year will be spent in our Reciprocal Teaching Groups, and I am excited to see how the students grow in their ability to independently apply the major comprehension strategies as they read.

In Writing, we are wrapping up our Slice of Life (Personal Narrative) Unit.  The students have created some real masterpieces, and it is amazing to see how much they have grown from the beginning of the year. This quarter, we will move into both expository and opinion writing.  Although these units are the major umbrella of the curriculum, the real content (“what good writers do”) comes in during Writers’ Workshop, as the students work through the writing process, and with a variety of mini-lessons along the way.  While the students have already come a long way in terms of their use of “good writer strategies,” I have high expectations for the kinds of writers they will be when they leave 2^nd grade.

Math is going GREAT!!!!  We are wrapping up Unit 5 on Geometry this week, and we will be moving into a number of different units that revolve around whole number operations, measurement, decimals, and even fractions!  As I mentioned at Curriculum Night, I use a “Guided Math” method of instruction.  It has definitely proven to be effective this year.  It has allowed me to meet with students at their level.  I can challenge the students who need it, and offer extra support when it is applicable.  This method has also allowed me to make “Math Workshop” an engaging form of independent practice.  Students are playing math games, working with manipulatives, and practicing the content in a variety of fun ways.  Although the changing curriculum has posed a number of challenges for the 2^nd grade team, we are all very happy with how math is going, and I can see the students growing as mathematical thinkers on a daily basis.

Social Studies and Science have been moving along as planned.  We recently finished a Science unit on the lifecycle of mealworms.  We are now moving into the lifecycle of plants and eventually into the water cycle.    In Social Studies, we will be covering units on government, geography, and the economy.  Although we have spent much of the year using Discovery Education, we will probably move more into an integrated curriculum for Social Studies and Science.  Much of the direct instruction and delivery of content will be done during Reading Workshop.  The students will use variety of non-fiction texts directly related to the Social Studies and Science units as they practice the “Good Reader Strategies.”  However, there will still be a number of engaging and content-rich projects the students will be working on that will cover the Social Studies and Science content.   

Time really has flown by so far this year, and we really have had a lot of fun! Then again, we have been EXTREMELY busy working through a wide variety of content, and we will continue to do so throughout the year. I look forward to talking to you more about this at Open House on February 5^th, and feel free to contact me at any time if you ever need anything at all!

ONE DOWN, THREE TO GO

It is hard to believe we are already a quarter of the way through the school year!  I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun.  While there has been plenty of fun in 2J, that has been integrated with a healthy dose of learning. We have been very busy this quarter, and we will continue this trend throughout the rest of the year.

In Reading, we have continued to practice our “Good Reader Strategies.”  Those include identifying narrative elements, creating mental images, making predictions, solving word problems, and summarizing. We will move into a number of different strategies throughout the year, but it is always important to keep these ones in mind as we read.  “Good Readers” use ALL the strategies, not just one or two at a time.  On another note, please make sure the students are reading a minimum of 100 minutes a week while at home. There is a lot of research out there that suggests the more independent reading a student does, the more successful they will be in all subject areas. Reading is a major focus in 2J, and it will continue to be throughout the year.

We have also started to make the connection between Reading and Writing.  In order to teach a number of “Good Writer Strategies,” I use a number of high-interest trade books that highlight the strategy we are working on.  This helps to make a connection between what strategies these authors used while writing their books, and what we should be doing as we write.  All of this instruction on strategies is culminating in our final opinion writing piece.  We have been working through the entire writing process from “pre-writing” to “publishing,” and I am very happy types of pieces I am seeing so far.  The students really are incorporating the things we have learned in Writing so far this year as they create their opinion pieces.  We will even be meeting with the Cool Cat Press to help us “make our writing pieces even better!”

Math has also been running like a well-oiled machine!  As I mentioned at the Curriculum Night, I use a “Guided Math” model in order to best meet the students’ needs, and deliver them with instruction that is MOST appropriate for them.  While it is a very effective instruction method, it does require some creativity in terms of management.  Well, I am proud to say that the class has really embraced the Math Workshop time, and we have accomplished A LOT so far this year.  We are currently moving into Unit 3: “Place Value, Time, and Money.” We will also continue to discuss various addition and subtraction strategies, and working on discussing the HOW & WHY we do math (“Intelligent Mathematical Conversations”).

In Social Studies and Science, we have wrapped up a number of units.  The kids have shown a real interest in the Discovery Education and Wiki sites, and I encourage you to use those at home as well.  We are almost done with our unit on Sink or Float in Science, and then we will move back into Social Studies.  While we have already started talking about the election process, government, and the branches of government, we will also move into U.S. History.  We will get to watch one of my favorite programs, The Liberty’s Kids Series, to begin learning about the American Revolution, and the kids are going to LOVE this!  We will also start learning about life cycles and the “MEAL WORM” unit, and the kids will LOVE this even more!

Time really has flown by so far this year, and we really have had a lot of fun!  Then again, we have been EXTREMELY busy working through a wide variety of content, and we will continue to do so throughout the year.  I look forward to talking to you more about this at conferences, and feel free to contact me at any time if you ever need anything at all!

A GREAT Start

It really has been a great start to the year!   We have been extremely busy so far this year.  In Reading, we have spent a lot of time practicing what good readers do.  Good readers identify Narrative Elements, create mental images, and make predictions before, during, and after reading.  We have also talked about a variety of ‘fix-up strategies” to utilize when we come across a word we can’t pronounce.  These are just a few of the strategies we have worked on during Reading Workshop. We will continue practicing “Good Reader Strategies,” and our goal is to increase fluency and comprehension skills.  Please make sure the students are reading a minimum of 100 minutes a week while at home. There is a lot of research out there that suggests the more independent reading a student does, the more successful they will be in all subject areas.  Obviously Reading is a major priority this year.

We are also working on becoming better writers.  We have talked about complete sentences, and how each sentence must start with a capital letter, have end punctuation, and include a subject and predicate.  We have even practiced the 6+1 traits of writing.  Good writers always keep in mind those traits including, “Ideas,” “Organization,” “Voice,” “Word Choice,” “Sentence Fluency,” “Conventions,” and “Presentation.”   We are now working on writing opinion pieces, and I am excited to see what the students have in store for me.

The new Math Curriculum has been off to a good start.  While the previous curriculum focused on covering a lot of material and skills, the new Common Core Math Standards focuses on digging deeper into each skill. By the end of second grade, every student should be fluent in adding and subtracting number sentence within 20.  They should also be able to utilize a number of different strategies to solve number stories, while explaining what they did, why they did it, and other ways they could have solved the problem.  The students must be able to have “intelligent mathematical conversations” in order to be proficient in each math standard.

We have been extremely busy in Social Studies and Science.  Although there are a number of resources we could utilize, I have decided to deliver most of the instruction via Discovery Education. The students are able to login to Discovery Education, record important learnings on the 2J class Wiki, and explain in their own words each Essential Questions for the Social Studies and Science units. We have already discussed the Scientific Method, Map Skills, and even what it takes to be a good community member.  We will now go into our “Sink or Float” unit, and I am excited to see how much the students learn from this unit.

It really has been a good start to the year.  Although I have extremely high expectations for the class, the students have really stepped up to the plate, and shown me that they can handle some advanced academic content.  I have high hopes for this group of students, I have no doubt they will meet and/or exceed my expectations.

WELCOME BACK!!!!

I hope everyone had a great summer! I stayed very busy, and I am definitely ready to be back to school. I will be using this blog as a way to communicate with parents, students, and others involved with 2J. There will be a lot of valuable information on this blog throughout the year. Browse around and you will see some helpful features that may be useful at some point. I will be updating this periodically on what we are doing in the classroom, the homework we had for the week, and links students can use at school and at home. Those are just a few of the features I have embedded in this blog, so be sure to check this on a regular basis.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to start a new year. I hope everyone is ready to go. I promise to do my best to make your 2nd grade experiences as exciting, challenging, and memorable as possible. However, I expect everyone to come in ready to work. You are big bad 2nd graders now, and as you will see, I have some high expectations. If all goes as planned, by the end of the year, you will be more than ready for third grade!!!

ALWAYS GO TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS BLOG TO SEE THE HOMEWORK FOR THE WEEK!!!!