January 10, 2020

Happy New Year!

We are back in the swing of things this week in Room 105...

We began a new unit of Reading Workshop this week called Bigger Books Mean Amping Up Reading Power. We kicked off this unit with a realistic fiction story called Happy Like Soccer by Maribeth Boelts. In the story a girl named Sierra plays soccer but is sad because her auntie who cares for her full time can't come to any soccer games because she has to work. We read the book several times and worked on retelling the story. We did a thinking routine with the book and discussed the character trait: optimistic!  We wrote a color, symbol and image that represented the main ideas in the story. Next week we will focus on reading with fluency. We will rehearse reading out loud using our best reading voice. We will try to "scoop up words into phrases" and notice dialogue tags.

Our new writing unit is called Writing About Reading. We began this week by writing a letter to another classroom about a book we think that class would enjoy. We focused on including these parts in our letters: stating an opinion, evidence or reasons for our opinion and an ending. Students will spend next week adding more to a letter by retelling a favorite part. We will rehearse out loud what we want to write in our letters. We will get a chance to give a letter to a fellow second grader!

We have just completed Unit 4 in math. Unit 5 will be centered around addition and subtraction.  We will review and extend concepts about money.  We will learn how to use a change diagram and a parts-total diagram. Look for a family letter to come home next week with more details about Unit 5.

This week we began a new social studies unit all about maps. We made a map of the classroom together. We read the book Mapping Penny's World. We learned how to put symbols and a map key on our maps. Students worked on a map scavenger hunt looking for symbols, places and a map title. We know how to match the symbols and colors in our key to the map. A mapping assignment went home Thursday and is due in one week on January 16th.

In Phonics this week we worked on using everything we know about phonics to read longer words. Some strategies we learned are: start at the beginning of the word and read it part by part. Try the vowel sound another way. Reread and ask "does that make sense?" Students practiced the skills with a partner using animal fact cards. We will continue to work on strategies to read longer words next week.

Have a wonderful weekend,
Mrs. Scheck