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!