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!