Thank you for attending Back to School Night. It was lovely to see you and discuss your child's year of learning! As we discussed, your child's homework for spelling and math should not be lengthly. The general Mountain Elementary policy is 20 minutes of reading and 10 minutes of other activities for grade. So, in 2nd grade, there should be no more than 20 minutes spent on spelling and math a night. The weekly spelling menu gives you fun ideas if you have time, but there is not expectation to complete the spelling activities on the spelling menu. Quick kinesthetic activities like drawing the words with your body, tapping out the words or cheering the words can be equally as valuable. Please see this blog below (especially the oral practice section and gross motor practice section) for more ideas to quickly review the spelling activities at home.
Dear 2nd Grade Families, Thank you for attending Back to School Night. It was lovely to see you and discuss your child's year of learning! As we discussed, your child's homework for spelling and math should not be lengthly. The general Mountain Elementary policy is 20 minutes of reading and 10 minutes of other activities for grade. So, in 2nd grade, there should be no more than 20 minutes spent on spelling and math a night. The weekly spelling menu gives you fun ideas if you have time, but there is not expectation to complete the spelling activities on the spelling menu. Quick kinesthetic activities like drawing the words with your body, tapping out the words or cheering the words can be equally as valuable. Please see this blog below (especially the oral practice section and gross motor practice section) for more ideas to quickly review the spelling activities at home. Sita, Adi's mom, shared a great resource for reading at the public library. The program is called Tales to Tails and it offers children a chance to read aloud to therapy dogs. It is a great opportunity for our readers. Please see the link below for more information. Also, please feel free to share any other resources you may find with me so I can post them on our blog! Have a great week-Libby
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Spelling On Fridays we have spelling. To begin, we have our spelling challenge. To do this we get our spelling notebook and our spelling list and go with our spelling partner. One partner reads the words and one partner writes the words. When we are done with our challenge we check our spelling with our spelling list in our spelling notebook. After that we highlight our high frequency or sight words we got correct. Any words we didn’t get correct are our review words for the next week. Next, we learn our next spelling pattern. Ms. Libby shows us a slideshow with pictures. When the picture shows up, we guess the picture. For example, there might be a pictures of rust, dust, list, and test. Then we try to guess the pattern based on the common sound, like st. Finally, we brainstorm words that match the spelling patterns on a chart. Then we use those words to pick out our spelling words for our list. We practice those words at school with word work and at home with different activities. In conclusion, we are becoming better spellers by learning spelling patterns and high frequency words. Art Every Thursday we have art. First, Mary Beth gives us instructions on what we are going to do. Then she shows us how to do the artwork. Afterwards, we do the pattern or project she showed us. Our art always turns out looking nice. Some of the projects we have worked on were making butterflies, painting falling leafs, and making a picture of our summer in one color. In conclusion, art is a lot of fun! Scholar of the Week Every week in 2nd grade there is a Scholar of the Week. To begin, every day the Scholar of the Week get excused first for recess, lunch and to go home. Next, the Scholar of the Week gets to present their poster and show something from their house under the document camera. In addition, every student gets to be Scholar of the Week 2 times this year. We are going in number order from 19-1. As you can see, being Scholar of the Week is a lot of fun. Dear Families, I hope you enjoyed the warm weekend with your family. Thank you to the parent volunteers who joined us for the creek trip. We had a lovely time bonding as a class. Though we went to the creek to look at rocks, we discovered Soquel Creek was full of frogs! Below is a video of a frog from the creek. This Wednesday, September 21st is Back to School Night. The night begins with a presentation from Diane Morgenstern at 6:15 p.m. entitled Current Mountain Topics. The presentation is open for both new families and returning families and I encourage you to attend. Teacher presentations for parents begin at 7:00 and 7:30 p.m. In 2nd grade we will be discussing the year in learning and strategies to support your child at home and in school. I look forward to seeing you there! Best Wishes, Libby Writing Workshop This week we started writing workshop. First, the writing workshop starts with a minilesson. This week we learned more ways to get ideas for our stories from Jane Yolen’s book Owl Moon and from Angela Johnson’s book The Leaving Morning. Next, we have practice time with our writing. We are building stamina writing our narrative stories. Last, we have midworkshop teaching. During this time we stop and talk about our stamina and get ideas for improving our writing so we can make our writing stronger. Eventually, we will end our workshop with a share. In the share we get to show our writing with our class. In conclusion, we enjoy writing workshop, writing our stories, and adding pictures to our writing. Reading Workshop This week we started our official reading workshop. First, we start reading workshop with a minilesson. This week in our minilessons we learned that readers decide how to read and that readers give a sneak peak before reading a book. We put these strategies in our reading notebook. For example, decide how to read went under F for fluency strategy and take a sneak peak went under C for a comprehension strategy. Next, we had time to practice with rotations. We usually read to self or do word work during this time. Some examples of word work are the sorting in our journal, sorting on cards, practicing our spelling words, and sorting with the stick sort. We sort for patterns like short vowels and blends or we work with our high frequency words. During rotations, we also meet with the teacher. During this time, we read a book as a group and write our ideas on big sticky notes. For example, some people are reading a book called Jasper John Dooley and there are two characters, Jasper and Ori. On the big sticky note we write what we notice about the characters like Jasper and Ori. As you can see, we are growing as readers during reading workshop.
Dear Families, I hope had a lovely weekend with your family. We continue to be growing our classroom community in 2nd grade and I’m excited to fully launch our small group instruction in reading and math this week. In the Monday packet you will find two new reading strategies to support your readers at home. The first strategy is finding good fit books. This strategy supports students in their comprehension or their ability to understand what they read and their reading fluency or their ability to read smoothly. In addition, there is a strategy sheet for skip the word then come back to support your child with accuracy or reading the words correctly. I have posted two videos explaining these strategies to our reading strategies tab. You will also see the math sprints gradually getting more difficult. In the math sprints we are working on recognizing groups of numbers rather than counting one by one. In this week’s sprint, we will be focusing on strategies to decompose or break a number into smaller numbers to make a ten. Doing sprints with the dots with help students visualize the basic facts and basic fact strategies. This Thursday after lunch we are visiting Soquel creek to explore river rocks to compliment our science studies in geology. Students are asked to bring a swimsuit, shoes for the creek, a water bottle and a towel. Boogie boards are ok to bring, but your child will be asked to share with his/her peers. Parents are welcome to attend the field trip. Please email me if you are interested in attending. Finally, below is our classical music song from last week. Last week we listened to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #3. Important Dates:
9/15/16-Creek Field Trip 9/21/16-Back to School Night 6:15 p.m. School Presentation 7:00 & 7:30 p.m. Classroom Presentations Math Workshop Almost every day after recess we have math workshop. In math workshop we work in small groups to learn math. Right now we are practicing our different rotations for when we launch our math workshop later this week. First, we have math games. In math games we are playing monster math. The game is a memory game and the goal is to match numbers with monsters on them so they add up to 20. Another thing we do is a independent math activity. To do this, we shake a cup with 20 dots in it. Then we spill the dots on a sheet with two ten frames on them. We see what combination of 20 we make. Then we check off our combination of 20 on the number bond sheet. Some examples of 20 are 0 and 20, 18 and 2, and 11 and 9. We are trying to get all the different combinations of 20. Lastly, we have math center. We are organizing number sentences with their matching sum cards in our math center. In conclusion, math workshop is amazing because it is fun and we are learning new things every week. Science In science we have been studying geology by exploring rocks. First, we put volcanic igneous rocks in water. The volcanic rocks, especially the red basalt rock, bubbled underwater. These were air bubbles coming out from the holes in the volcanic rock. Next, we explored river rocks. We sorted river rocks by their properties. A property is a word geologists use to describe a rocks Finally, we took a field trip to explore the rocks around Mountain Elementary. Next week we will put our schoolyard rocks in water to better explore their properties. As you can see, we are learning about rocks.
Dear Families,
I hope you enjoyed your long weekend with your family. It continues to be a joy working with your children as they transition to a new classroom and a new learning year. We continued to learn new reading strategies last week. We learned two new reading strategies to help readers when they don’t know a word. Strategies that help students read words correctly are called accuracy strategies. The strategies we learned this week are called cross check and flip the sound. I’ve included information on these reading strategies in your child’s homework packet. I’ve also updated our website with a new page called reading strategies. If you would like to see these reading strategies in action, you can watch the videos on the reading strategy page. This past week we introduced our weekly spelling. Literacy research shows that instruction in spelling patterns and sight words (frequent and uncommonly spelled words) can support students in becoming stronger readers as well as stronger writers. Every Friday in 2nd grade students will be introduced to a common spelling pattern (short vowels, blends, long vowels etc.). As a class we will brainstorm words with the selected spelling patterns and students will choose five words we brainstormed for their spelling list. The remaining 5-10 spelling words words are sight words. Throughout the week we will practice working with the spelling patterns and practice our sight words during our reading workshop. I’ve have copied and sent home a list of your child’s spelling in this week’s homework packet. I’ve also included a spelling menu to give your child fun ideas on ways he/she could practice spelling. I encourage home spelling practice to be a fun and a multisensory activity for your child. I understand activities from the spelling menu may or may not fit into your family schedule. If not, I recommend you to post the spelling list on the fridge, talk about the words with your child, and practice the words verbally during convenient times, like the car ride to school. If your child is developing as a reader, I encourage you to focus your efforts on helping your child first practice reading the sight words, instead of spelling the sight words. The activities from the spelling menu can also help your child practice reading his/her words. If you are short on time while learning to read the sight words, making a flashcard with a paper and reviewing the words throughout the week can be an easy way for your child master reading the sight words. Working with sight words will impact your child's reading development tremendously. On Friday we will take a low-stress spelling challenge with spelling partners and select our words for the following week. Please don't hesitate to email me if you have questions at [email protected]. Have a wonderful week!-Libby Important Dates: 9/5/16-No School for Labor Day 9/9/16-Parent Club Lasagna and Movie Night 6pm 9/21/16-6:30 p.m. Back to School Night (Parents Only) Our Classroom Library There are many books in the classroom library. First, the blue baskets are fiction books. Fiction stories are made up stories. Some stories can be fairy tails and other books can be more realistic. Next, the white baskets are nonfiction books. Nonfiction books have real information in them. Last, when we got our books for read to self we practiced the different ways to read a book. We practiced reading the words, reading the pictures, and retelling the book. In conclusion, we are enjoying reading books from our own classroom library. Classical Music Listening In 2nd grade we begin every afternoon by listening to classical music. Each we we are introduced to a new song and listen to it four times a week. To begin, this week we listened to a song by Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach lived in Germany over 250 years ago. Next, we learned Bach’s music is written for a lot of different instruments. For example, in the song we are listening to has horn and string instruments. Last, we listen to classical music right after lunch because it calms us down and helps us get ready for learning. Also, listening to music also helps us warm up our brains. In conclusion, we love laying our heads down on the table and listening to music. You can listen to this past week's song, Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, on the video below. |
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