Happy Summer!

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What an amazing year that we've had. We ended our second grade experience with a memorable visit from Tao our Chinese Exchange Teacher. She taught us how to write and speak in Chinese and taught us about her country. We worked hard to create our Night Sky Museum and the effort showed as we debuted our exhibits. This past week we headed outside to Shelburne Farms and to the end of the year picnic at Catamount Family Center. Tomorrow the students will officially become third graders! It has been a pleasure getting to learn and grow with each and everyone of my students over the past two years. I will miss them all and wish them the best of luck at WCS! Have a great summer.

Important Dates for May and June

We all had a restful April break and came back to school ready to head to outer space. That's right, we have begun studying the sun, moon, and stars. The students will spend a week learning about the phases of the moon and then a week learning about the sun, stars, and constellations. Then each student do an independent project to answer a question that they have about one of these concepts. They will do research and create a project to exhibit their new learning at our end of the year "Night Sky Museum" on May 31st from 6:30-7:30.

 The students are already abuzz with energy about the museum and they have an incredible variety of creative ideas that they are tossing around about their research projects and how to transform Synergy into a museum for the big night. I can't wait to see what they come up with and we look forward to having you join us on May 31st.

 The museum is just one of the dates that you should put on your calendar during the home stretch to the end of the year. Here is a list of important dates:

 May 7 and 9th- Tao comes to Synergy and our class to share her Chinese Heritage. Be sure to ask your child what they learned about China.

 May 9th- A special viewing of HONK at WCS.

 May 17- Last Synergy Spirit Day- Picnic Day. Bring a bagged lunch and a blanket!

 May 22nd- Four Winds May 28th- Memorial Day- NO SCHOOL

 May 31st- NIGHT SKY MUSEUM 6:30-7:30

 June 5th- Move Up Morning- A visit to WCS to meet our new teachers and classmates.

 June 8th- Fun Day at WCS

 June 11th- Team trip to Shelburne Farms

 June 12th- Synergy Family Day at Catamount (More Info to Follow)

 June 13th- Last Day of School

It will definitely be an exciting and busy few weeks for us. Here's hoping for more beautiful spring weather as we head into Summer!

Proud Poets

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The students are loving our poetry unit and are fully immersed in reading, writing, and reciting many different poems. To start the week, we created "Pocket Poem" folders to keep our growing collection of poems in. Then we practiced discussing the things that we notice about poetry with our partners. At the end of the week we practiced reading poems fluently. We practiced as a group and then with a partner. Then we spoke into the iPad and recorded ourselves using the camera. When we played back the video we all gave ourselves a score for fluency using a rubric. The class had a great time with this activity and at the same time got a lot of practice using volume, clarity, pacing, and expression to recite their poems beautifully.

In writers workshop we created a list of big ideas that we could zoom in on to write poetry from the heart. Then we learned how to write a poem in the Cinquain style. These poems have a pattern of 1 noun, 2 adjectives, 3 verbs, a 4 word phrase, and end with a 1 word synonym. This was a fun, interactive, and creative way to practice the different parts of speech. At the end of the week, we discussed how poet's use juicy words to write about an ordinary thing in a new way. We have a juicy word chart started in the room as a guide for writing our own poems.

Reading and Writing With A Poet's Eye

This week we began our study of Poetry in both Readers and Writers Workshop. The classroom is bursting with poem books of all varieties and the students have begun to learn how to use their "poet's eye" to read, discuss, interpret, and write poetry.

In Writer's Workshop we headed outside to use our senses to observe the trees that sit on top of the hill at Allen Brook. The students jotted in their Poetry Journals about the size, shape, textures, and smells of the trees. The next day we practiced using line breaks to take our notes and put them into a poem. Next week we will think about where poets get ideas for their poems, how poets use interesting word choice, and will learn different structures of poems.

In Readers Workshop we created poetry folders to store all of the poems that we discuss and interpret together. Then they will have a collection to read and reread with partners to build fluency skills. We made a chart of the things that we notice about poetry and have used our poet's eyes to interpret what the poet's message is. We listened to Langston Hughes read us his poem, Dream Variations, and then we discussed what we thought his message was. I was amazed at how profound the student thinking was about this beautiful poem. Here were some of the thoughts that we had:

" When he said 'black like me' it made me think that maybe he has black skin."
" I thought the same thing when it said, 'dark like me."
" When he wrote 'till the white day is done' I thought that maybe the poet lived during Martin Luther King time when black people and white people didn't get along."
" I think that he was writing about when he was a little boy and thinking about what he wanted when he was grown up."
" I thought it was different. I was thinking that he was really writing about a dream that he was having when he was asleep."

We would love to have you comment on what you thought the author's message was in this poem.


Dream Variations

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.
Langston Hughes

Published Authors

We spent the past week in Writers Workshop publishing our How To/Procedural writing pieces using the iPads. The Scribble Press app allows us to illustrate and type our writing pieces in a child friendly format. Then the students created a back cover and front cover. When they were done they emailed their published piece to me so that I could share it with families. The other cool thing that we were able to do is sync our finished pieces to iBooks. That means that whenever we are on the iPads we can read each other's published pieces. The project was challenging and motivating for the young writers and they all did an amazing job. In April we will move into a study of Poetry in both Readers and Writers Workshop.

For our theme unit around Citizenship all of the students of Synergy House became a part of a council where they needed to create rules and laws for a certain part of the school day. The councils were locker area, bathroom, lunch room, and recess. The students came up with "laws" for each area, created posters and reward cards for their council, and then presented their laws to the entire team. For the past week they have been "on duty" making sure that the rules and laws for their area are being followed. They are really taking their jobs seriously and have been recognizing responsibility in the actions of their teammates.

We began a new unit in math this past week. Unit Five will have us working with larger numbers to find effective and efficient strategies for addition and subtraction. We will think about ways to represent our thinking in pictures, numbers, and words. Students will be creating and solving story problems created by their fellow mathematicians. The mathematicians will also come back to use their strategies to count mixed quantities of coins up to $2.00.
Click here to read more about this unit.

Spring Has Sprung!

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We are fully immersed in our nonfiction unit of study in both Readers and Writers Workshop this month. The students have learned that when writers are composing a How To piece it helps to plan orally with a partner to make sure that they understand all of the steps that are involved. The students got to try out this strategy in partners and while they read their writing piece their partner pretended to walk through the steps. I think that you can see from some of the photos that there was a lot of active engagement with this exercise! The writers then gave each other feedback about what was clear and suggestions on what they could add to make their writing piece even more easy to understand. Then they students learned about features that all How To pieces had and assessed each other's writing using a checklist to see if the piece contained a title that told what it was teaching, a list of materials that is needed, clear steps in order, and pictures that describe the steps.

On Thursday we embraced the unseasonable weather with a Hawaiian Spirit Day. The students went all out with their costumes and it felt like a sunny summer day in Synergy House. I have enclosed some photos in the slide show. I love the one of the girl's rendition of the "hula hula."

Don't forget to sign up for a conference if you haven't already. Reports will be coming home on Friday.

Conference Time Is Here Again

We came back from break with a bang by celebrating the amazing Dr. Seuss with a belated birthday brunch of Green Eggs and Ham. Then we read The Lorax and did a writing and art piece about how we would make the world a better place. It was a great way to transition back from our relaxing break.

In Readers and Writers workshop we dove into a study of nonfiction. The students are learning to use features like glossaries, captions, labels, and table of contents to gather information and determine importance. There is something so fascinating about nonfiction for students of this age and I love watching them fall into these books. There is a certain buzz in the room during readers workshop and it is contagious. In Writers Workshop, the writers have graduated to teaching others how to do something in a procedural/How To writing piece. We have worked in partners and used mentor texts to write clear, detailed, easy to understand pieces that someone else can follow along to.

The trimester closes on March 17th and you can expect reports to be coming home on March 23rd. Spring conferences will begin the next week. You can sign up for them on the Google Doc that is linked to the Important Dates on the Sidebar of the blog. I look forward to meeting with all of you.

Until then, enjoy this magnificent weather.