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!