Weekly Update: 9/30 - 10/4

Reader's Workshop
- Readers have strategies for figuring out brand-new words. You can use strategies to figure out what a new vocabulary word means. We read the word "fixing" in Vera Williams' book Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe, and could tell from the context (fixing breakfast) that fixing meant making here, not repairing.
- Readers check themselves and their reading, making sure they are saying the right words and it all makes sense. We used shared reading (looking at one text and reading together as a group, out loud) to work on fluency and to discuss strategies that readers use as they go. We read the poem "Lunch" (which many students have memorized at this point!) and a chapter in one of the Mercy Watson books for this work. When we got to unknown words, tricky ones that might be hard for second graders, we thought: What makes sense? What sounds right? and What looks right?

Writer's Workshop
We are still writing personal narratives, true stories from our lives. We learned more good strategies for making our writing more interesting and descriptive.
- We can describe a place in our stories. We played a game where other students had to guess where we were after just reading a list of descriptive words.
- We used techniques to build drama in our stories (the drama of the turning of the page).
- We stole borrowed techniques from books we had read, because good authors are always learning new ways from what they read. The one we loved the most was the . . . , which then showed up in almost everyone's story to build drama and keep readers wondering what would happen.
- We reviewed punctuation and capitalization so that our sentences are easy to read and understand.
- We reviewed all of the many, many writing strategies we learned about this year.

Math
We kept learning about measurement with metric units this week. We measured with centimeter rulers (both the ones we made last week and ones from our classroom), used a measuring tape to find how big a meter is, and thought about how to measure really big objects. We used mental benchmarks to help us estimate some lengths in centimeters and meters. For instance, we know the door is about 2 meters tall, and that can help us figure out how many meters other large objects are, too. We compared metric lengths and solved addition and subtraction problems by using a measuring tape and ruler.

We had the most fun measuring in non-standard units, though. Mr. MacLellan tricked the class by giving different groups different sizes of paper clips and then measuring the same objects. When different groups had different answers, we wondered what had gone wrong. Through some careful detective work, students figured out that some had a large paper clip and others had a small one. You always have to watch those sneaky teachers.

Science
We are starting to think about observable physical properties, things like color, hardness, absorbency, flexibility, and texture. We tested some materials for these properties and shared our results with the group.

We also spent some time in our school garden. We found and drew white flowers, and thought about what plant structures we have seen and what they are for.

Social Studies
We are studying maps! We looked at a number of very different maps, and described what we noticed in them. You can look at some maps at home, too!

Weekly Update: 9/23 - 9/27

Reader's Workshop
We continued our reading work by practicing some strategies for solving unknown words. We said, "Second grade readers roll up their sleeves to figure out tricky words, drawing on everything they know." We talked about using more than one strategy at a time, looking, for instance, at how to predict what word probably goes in a spot, then checking by re-reading the first part of the word. We asked ourselves if the words we read made sense, and practiced going back to fix ones that didn't. We looked at beginnings and endings that can be read in a snap, and vowel teams in the middle of words. We also went over book shopping and how to use our classroom library to choose a just-right book.

Writer's Workshop
We are doing a lot of writing! Second graders are already making a lot of progress from their work just a few weeks ago. This week, we are talking about:
- How do authors stretch out their stories to keep them interesting? What are all the details you can add?
- Good authors use star words to keep their writing interesting to their readers.
- We can tell our readers how the characters feel in our stories. Feelings are great places to use star words to be very specific. We made a giant list of feeling words as a class.
- Authors use many techniques to add emphasis to a word or a phrase, things like writing in bold, caps, or underlining.

Math
We finished up our first math unit of the year, thinking about ways of breaking up numbers when adding and subtracting. For a problem like 26 - 7, we used number bonds to break the bigger number into 10 and some more. Our new problem would be 10 - 7, which is easy to solve! Then, we can add the 3 back to the remaining 16. Strategies like these are very useful for being flexible in our thinking when we get to more challenging math work this year, and in being able to solve problems in our heads.

We also started our next math unit, measuring in metric units, including adding and subtracting lengths. We built on what students had learned in first grade.We used centimeter cubes to measure objects, starting at the beginning and keeping all of the units touching. We figured out what to do the thing is not exactly a specific number of cubes (choose the number it is closest to, and show that it is approximate by writing ~). We then used just one cube to measure objects, marking the lengths as we measured on paper. We ended the week by creating our own centimeter rulers with a cube, a task that required a lot of patience, careful work, and perseverance when things got challenging.

Science
We worked more on our scientific drawing skills this week, making detailed drawings of shells. We also used magnets to explore an observable physical property in the materials in our classroom!

Social Studies
We tried to consolidate our rule ideas from last week, combining those that were similar and trying to get close to identifying just 4 or 5 big rules for second grade. This was tricky, but we started to see how many of our ideas shared common features and could be grouped together into other categories. We ended the week with a final 5 rules:
- show respect
- do our best work
- take care of materials and spaces
- be kind
- have fun, even when it is hard
These rules will guide our classroom lives this year, and we will continue to check how we are living up to them.

Spanish
We had two days of Español with Señora Reed. We are continuing to work on describing the things in a classroom.
- Cómo está el tiempo?
- En mi mochila, yo tengo...
- Dibujar y escribir utiles

News and Other Information
For morning meeting questions this week:
- What is your favorite fall activity?
- Do you have a favorite word?
- Did you ever stay over at your grandparent's house?
- Do you ever help with making dinner?

The first week of school

Welcome to Second Grade! We have a fun and exciting year ahead of us, filled with growth, learning, and friendships.

The first weeks of school focus on getting to know each other, learning classroom routines, and developing our group dynamics. Grounding this work is our school's implementation of the Responsive Classroom approach.

Reader's Workshop
We read a lot of books this week! We loved School's First Day of School, All Are Welcome!, Chrysanthemum, and Clark the Shark. We also started our readers workshop, and began thinking of ourselves as big-time readers. Over the next month, we will build our independent reading stamina, going from less than 10 minutes now to over 45 minutes in the beginning of October. Second graders read a lot, and building this stamina is essential for all of the reading growth we will see this year.

We had a couple of reading lessons this week, learning about choosing just-right books with the 5 finger rule, how to have a discussion with a partner, what independent reading should look like, and how to have a class discussion about a book.

Writer's Workshop
We set our expectations for writing in second grade, because second graders write a lot. We only have thirty minutes of writer's workshop a day, so we have to make every minute count! Mr. MacLellan showed us the magic wands we will be using this year (that can make marks on paper, and then make them disappear!) This week, we were writing about things that happened over summer vacation.

Math
We started the year with a "Week of Inspirational Math," an idea from Jo Boaler's Youcubed initiative. Students worked together to solve challenging and expansive problems, ones with no set answers, that introduced us to the mindsets we need to have in math this year. We identified ways to sort emojis and shapes, played a game to find combinations of tens and ones, used Cuisinaire rods to explore equivalency, and found combinations of feet from different animals. We also watched a bunch of mindset videos about our incredible brains!

Social Studies
We are building our classroom community this week, learning about each other, our roles in the class, and our expectations for lunch and recess.

News and Other Information
Back to school night is Thursday, September 19th!