The View from 2-2: Our Weekly Update!

The students in our class were such hard workers this week! I'm really starting to see their independence and focus increase as we settle into the school year. I found myself looking around the room at the children working so carefully and quietly at their desks, the computers, or with a buddy several times this week- and I was so impressed! This independence is crucial so that I am able to pull small groups to work with. We have such a great bunch of learners in our class this year!

In reading this week, the children read a whole-group story about a little girl named Rosina, who is deaf. We read about her school, her family, her interests, and we noticed that even though Rosina can't hear, she is just like us! It was a great text- not only to practice our comprehension strategy of identifying the main idea and details, but also in recognizing that we may have differences but we are still alike in so many ways. We used a graphic organizers similar to the one below in class this week. They are simple to create or find online- consider using them at home after your child has finished reading for the day!

Our small guided reading groups met this week too! After completing our Fountas & Pinnell reading assessments, the children are now placed in groups that match their reading ability level. The children will be working on their close reading strategies during this time. This will include: activating background knowledge prior to reading, predicting, visualizing, connecting, inferring, questioning, evaluating, and summarizing. We are also on the lookout for new vocabulary words! The children will keep track of their thinking on post-it notes, and those notes will come home when the text is complete. Its so important to stop and think critically while reading!

Our grammar lessons this week focused in on identifying the predicate, or the "action" of the sentence. You might have noticed that the children were coloring the subject of the sentence yellow, and the predicate green. This reminded us visually that there are two important parts to every sentence! It also helped us to see that the first word in green was usually an action word.

The children's autobiographies are really beginning to take shape! After writing about our lives as a baby, pre-schooler, Kindergarten/1st grader, and our lives now, the children worked with a partner to edit their work. We looked for conventional errors such as spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, but we also made sure to compliment our partner's writing, as well as suggest areas that could use more detail. We have begun the publishing stage of the writing process, and we plan to celebrate our finished autobiographies next week.

We have begun Unit 2 in math. The children started off the week creating story problems using the addition facts that we are working so hard to memorize! After working hard on our "doubles," "doubles + 1", and "doubles in between facts," we are ready to move on to some new strategies this week! The children will be practicing their "+9" and "make a ten" facts next! We have the xtramath.org site up on our classroom computers and the children are rotating to the computers and iPad throughout the day to get additional practice in this way, too. (Don't forget, you have access to this account at home, too!) So many kids have moved down from 5 minutes to 4 minutes on their "mad minute" this week! Our hard work is paying off! Keep up the great work!

Our new science unit on Motion started this week! We started off thinking about what makes a good scientist. We learned that good scientists are always thinking, trying, observing, recording, discovering, and wondering. These will be underlying themes in our science units throughout the year. The children went on a motion hunt during afternoon recess one day, and then we practiced recording our observations in our science notebooks. We made sure to label our drawings, including the motion we observed, as well as the speed and direction of the motion.

Finally, we wrapped up our week with a wonderful "Star Student" afternoon with Katie Rose! Mrs. Ryerson came in for a visit and assisted Katie with a fascinating experiment that showed us how to create our very own homemade lava lamp! All Katie needed was food coloring, water, oil, and salt! What a neat experiment! Katie read the class Chester's Way by Kevin Henkes, and we all shared why we think she is a star student. We are so lucky to have such a hardworking, bright, helpful and caring girl in our class! You had a great week, Katie!