Coming soon to a field trip near you!

Map of Old Sturbridge Village

     This Wednesday, October 24th, our class will have our long-awaited field trip to Sturbridge Village! We are leaving school promptly at 9am, so please be sure to be on time for school that day! We will return to school by 2:45, so students will be in time for the afternoon busses.

     An email went home to parents last week outlining the "must knows" for this trip and a hard copy of that same email will be sent home in Monday's communication folder. Please be sure that your child dresses appropriately for the weather on Wednesday. This trip is rain or shine and we will be spending a lot of time outdoors. Lunches should be entirely disposable (i.e. no lunch boxes or plastic containers) and please do not send any glass bottles with your child. Electronic devices are not allowed on this trip.

     While we are at Sturbridge Village, we hope to see how a community functioned long ago and compare it to how our community functions today. We also hope to see goods and services in action! Talk to your child about what they hope to see on the trip! We have looked at maps of Sturbridge Village in social studies, so the children have some ideas of what we will see there. You can also check out their website at www.osv.org to see pictures of the village, a calendar of events, and take a virtual tour.

   Be on the lookout next week for a post containing picture of our trip! We are excited to learn about how a community works together!

Listen to Reading

“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.”

~~ Emilie Buchwald

    That above quote is SO true. Our children's first experience with books often comes from sitting on a parent's or grandparent's lap, listening to our favorite stories being read to us. It is through this experience that we learn what fluent reading should sound like. It exposes us to new vocabulary, ideas, and genres. Being read to can often help start a life-long love of reading. One of my favorite memories is of my mom reading me a chapter from Stuart Little every night at bedtime when I was about five. To this day I still love that book, and more importantly, I love to read.

   Because of the power of being read to, this past week we introduced the fourth of our daily literacy activities-"Listen to Reading." Listen to reading involves using books on tape or CD and following along with the text while hearing the story read through our headphones.  We have 2 listening centers and each week there are two books at each to listen to. One is a "must read" book, so that we can all experience and discuss the same text, and the other is a choice book. Some weeks there are comprehension activities to go long with the stories and some weeks we listen just for the pure joy of being read to. We spent time as a class discussing the purpose for Listen to Reading  and we came up with the following ideas:

• We can learn new words.
• We can hear good fluency.
• We can practice our comprehension.
• We can hear stories that aren't "just right" books for us to read alone.
• Hearing lots of stories can help us with our writing. (by being exposed to new vocabulary and writing styles)
• It's fun!

  This year we will also be using parent volunteers during our literacy block to read aloud to students one on one, as we work to create literacy-rich environments for all of our students. We can definitely use your help! If you are interested in coming in to read to individual students during our literacy blocks, reading out loud to the entire class as a "guest reader," or if you have children's books on tape or CD that you'd be willing to let us borrow for a week or two-we'd really appreciate the help!

   Keep reading aloud to your children! It is such a powerful tool!

Meet our Pen Pal, Danielle!

Danielle and 3 of her students

Our class has a pen pal this year! Her name is Danielle and she is a Peace Corps volunteer in Cambodia. Danielle is originally from Massachusetts and has been teaching in Cambodia and working in an orphanage. We've been sending letters and pictures back and forth and so far we've learned about the weather in Cambodia, transportation in Cambodia, schools in Cambodia, what houses are like in Cambodia, and we even saw a picture of an elephant that walked through Danielle's village!

Last week our class worked together in groups of two or three students to write a paragraph in a letter to Danielle and create an illustration to go with that paragraph. We wrote about our specials, recess, our classroom, our teachers, and what lunch is like in our school.  Here are a couple of the pictures we sent Danielle:

The blacktop and playground at Floral Street School.

Media time with Mrs. Andreano.

We will share some other pictures that we drew with you later!

The Daily 5

This is how we decide if a book is "just right" for us.

We are slowly, but surely getting our Daily 5 literacy routines into our muscle memory! We work hard to establish routines and expectations for our literacy block at the start of the school year, so that we are able to achieve all of our reading goals as the year goes on.  We started this year with learning how to choose a book that is "just right" for us. A just right book is a book that we can read and comprehend independently.  We use the "I Pick" strategy to choose books for our book boxes and books that we would like to read at home.

After we learned how to pick just right books and filled our book boxes with books we couldn't wait to get our hands on, we learned the routine for Read to Self.  Read to Self is a time when students can choose a just right book from their book box to enjoy independently. Ask your child what it means to "sit EEKK style!"

Now that we were well on our way towards building our reading stamina, we decided it was time to build our writing stamina as well. Enter Work on Writing! Work on Writing is a time during our literacy block when students can write in their writing journals. Each student has a list of writing ideas that are special to them at the front of their notebook and students are encouraged to write stories in any genre that they choose. So far we've written and shared character/problem/solution stories, fairy tales, personal narratives, poetry, songs, and mystery stories!

After we had mastered Read to Self and Work on Writing, we learned how to Read to Someone. Read to Someone is a way to practice both reading comprehension and fluency with a partner. When students choose a parter to read with, they decide if they are going to work on comprehension or fluency. If they choose comprehension, each partner checks for understanding after their partner reads aloud to them by saying ,"I heard you say..." and then describing the text that was just read aloud. If partners decide to work on fluency, they use a strategy called "I Read, You Read." Ask your child to show you how to do I Read, You Read at home!

Read to Someone Coaching Sheet

It was really hard to build our stamina for Read to Someone! There was SO much that we had to remember to do. From practicing fluency and comprehension to working cooperatively with a peer, Read to Someone can be a lot of work! Once we were able to Read to Someone for 10 minutes without a break, we added in an activity called "Coaching or Time." The listening student learned how to use a check list to help their reading partner when the partner got stuck on a tough word.

You might be saying, "Wait?! She said 'Daily 5.' I only heard about 3 different activities: Read to Self, Work on Writing, and Read to Someone!" Daily 5 is still a work in progress for us. Next week we'll learn about Listen to Reading and then the following week we'll learn how to do Word Work. Once we have all 5 parts of the Daily 5 up and running, our literacy block will run smoothly and we will be free to work together in small guided reading groups to read books at our instructional level with the support of a teacher.

Getting Into the Swing of Things!

     This past Thursday we welcomed our parents into our school for curriculum night!  It was great to see so many faces. We hope you enjoyed getting a peek at what life in second grade is like! As I mentioned that night, if you are interested in having your email address shared with the other families in the class, you can either leave a comment on this blog post or send me an email to let me know. I will send out an updated address list later this week. Also, the book order you received at curriculum night is due this Friday. There will be a new book order sent home every other month.
     This week we really started getting into the swing of things! We have most of our routines and procedures down and are now working on mastering them. We are well into our Everyday Math curriculum and started our nightly math Home Links on Wednesday night. Information on practicing Xtra Math at home was in the folder you received on curriculum night.  Yesterday we had our first lesson on answering math open response questions. Everyone did a great job as we worked through two problems together. We learned to read the entire problem first, highlight the question being asked, underline the key words, choose the appropriate strategy for solving the problem, actually solve the problem, record our answer, explain our thinking, and check our work. Next Friday students will work on a similar problem more independently. We also began our addition fact quizzes this week and will be working on practicing our addition facts in class.
     We are nearly done with our reading assessments and will be starting our guided reading groups shortly. The students are working on mastering our Daily 5 literacy routines. Right now we are working to build our stamina as we read to self, work on writing, and read to someone. We will be adding in listen to reading later this week. The final part of Daily 5 is word work and that will begin the first week in October.  This past week we focused on learning the expectations for all written work in second grade. You received a copy of these expectations and a copy of our personal word wall in your folder from curriculum night. The reading log that we discussed Thursday night will go home for the first time on Monday! Be sure to keep this in a safe place and return it to school on Friday.
    I hope that everyone has a wonderful week! I will be contacting those who expressed interest in volunteering later this week!

Smile! It's school picture day!

     Smile! Today was school picture day! Everyone was so excited and brought their best smiles!  Mrs. Rimkus and I had such a great time watching everyone proudly smile for the photographer. You could tell by the looks on everyone's faces that this was a REALLY important moment in the life of a second grader. We can't wait until the pictures go home so you can see them too! You are going to LOVE them!

    This has been a busy week for us in second grade! We have continued to learn about the routines and procedures for our literacy block. This week we continued to practice read to self. We also introduced read to someone and learned how to use this strategy to practice both our reading fluency and comprehension. Ask your child to tell you about how we check for understanding and how we practice fluency with a partner. (We call this "I read, you read.")  We learned more about the life cycle of the frog this week in science and in math we worked on telling time, counting coins, and finding equivalent names for numbers.  We also worked on super silent and speedy transitions this week! Ask your child to tell you why it is important that we transition quickly and quietly from one activity to another.

     Next week we will be learning about second grade writing expectations. We will be learning the expectations for spelling, punctuation, organization, and capitals in our writing. In science we will be learning how to tell the difference between frogs and toads. In math we will be learning more about equivalent names for numbers and working with base-10 blocks and dominoes! Curriculum night for second grade is on Thursday, September 20 from 6:45-8:00 PM. We hope to see many of you there! Please let me know if you cannot make it so I can send home the materials with your child. I will be handing out information on second grade in general, volunteering in our classroom, and the November conference day.

Have a great week!

The Second Week of Second Grade!

The Life Cycle of a Frog

     Here we are at the end of the second week of second grade! The time is flying by already! We had lots of excitement in our class this week! We traded in the desks we were borrowing for tables! We welcomed a new student, Acram, into our class! We celebrated Saket's birthday by singing him our new birthday song and signing a card for him! We also started learning about the life cycle of a frog! We read a big book about a frog's life cycle that had AWESOME photographs of frogs in different stages. Then we started working on creating our own frog life cycle books. We plan to finish these in school on Friday!

     We started Everyday Math this week! We have been learning about our daily math routines like math journals, homework folders, and mini white boards. We've worked on problems related to money and time. We also learned a fun new math game called Number Line Squeeze! Ask your child to tell you about this fun game!

    This week we also finished illustrating and writing about our hopes and dreams for the school year. (You can check them out on the board by my desk when you visit our classroom.) We then used these hopes and dreams to brainstorm rules that we would need this year if we wanted our hopes and dreams to come true. We started out with 16 rules, but decided that 16 was WAY too many to remember! Today we narrowed them down to our 5 final class rules. They are:

• Be polite.
• Be focused.
• Use self-control.
• Share (but not your food!)
• Have a positive attitude.

We are now working on group posters that illustrate our rules so that visitors to our classroom will know the expectations for working and learning in room 205!

    In reading this week we worked on building our stamina for Read to Self! We are now up to reading silently on our own for 6 minutes at a time. I wanted to try for 8 minutes tomorrow, but the class convinced me that they were ready to go for 10 minutes of silent reading! They love reading!

     Finally, we wrote our first story of the year this week! We wrote about a favorite summer activity. Students wrote about trips to the beach, amusement parks, playing at Dean Park, swimming, climbing through caves, playing sports, and so much more! It sounds like everyone had a great summer!

    We hope that everyone has a great Friday and a wonderful weekend!