Our first full week of 2013 in second grade was wonderful! It was SO great to see each child’s smiling face and hear about all of their holiday break fun with family. They bring so much joy to our second grade classroom and to me! We have jumped right back into our learning adventures and are excited about some of our new studies :).
Writing: Our writers are venturing into raising the level of their stories by studying a mentor author. We are learning from Cynthia Rylant, the author of the Henry and Mudge books, High Rise Private Eyes books, Mr. Putter and Tabby as well as other wonderful books. This week we are noticing and naming what authors do in their stories to make them interesting. This ability to notice and name will lead into developing the craft/strategy into their own writing.
In addition to various crafts, such as, varying punctuation, dialogue, juicy words, transition words, inner thoughts, and character feelings, our second graders have also graduated to another level of writing. Drum roll please……. Writing stories in packets that have more room for writing and less room for pictures. The pictures continue to guide our writing but they are not the focus. As we incorporate more strategies, our stories will naturally become longer. WAY TO GO WRITERS!!!!
Reading: Our little readers jumped right back into being REAL readers where we choose one spot to sit, stay focused on our reading, read the WHOLE time and use our comprehension and decoding strategies. They did a MARVELOUS job! We have reviewed all of our comprehension strategies including check for understanding, making connections, creating visualization and inferring character’s feelings and actions. Through all of these strategies we determined that READING IS THINKING. The storyline plays in our mind and we think about the characters, the setting and the actions that are taking place. Next week we will be extending our learning of making inferences while we read.
Math: We started our 2013 with a review of money counting ( including pennies, dimes, nickels, quarters and dollars) and we will be moving into a study of subtraction. It will be helpful to have your child practice subtraction facts at home to build their fluency when solving multiple digit subtraction. The children will be coming home on Monday with subtractions cards to practice at home, but here is a post from last month that references some fun apps as well. SUBTRACTION APPS.
Our new venture into multi digit subtraction with regrouping ( borrowing as we were taught :)) will require many opportunities for children to build confidence to become secure with the concept. Therefore, we will take a least two weeks to provide strategy instruction and many opportunities for success. Here is a copy of the parent math letter that will be coming home on Monday that describes the two methods that we will be learning about in the math class:
Social Studies: Our law makers have proposed a rule/law that we should adopt in our classroom and are working on gathering their petition signatures before they send it to the mayor (me) for approval. This is a great way for us to wrap up our study of city government.
Next week we will begin a study of economics. In addition to learning about various resources ( natural/human), how products are made and costs vs. profits, the children will have a GREAT opportunity to design their own products, produce them at school and then sell them to other second graders on Market Day. It is a great experience for the kids. Look for more information in the weeks to come :).
Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs. Kuieck 🙂