Ready, Set, Read!

Make a picture slideshow

Our First Unit of Study in Reader's Workshop reviews expectations for the workshop and teaches strategies for reading with stamina, fluency and meaning. This week we reviewed how to choose a Just Right book and the students were interviewed and photographed with their Just Right book using the iPad. They told me many different strategies that they used to choose a book that was just right for them. Some of these included, looking at the font and pictures to see if it looks just right, reading two or three pages and seeing if they have less than five tricky words per page, choosing a familiar book that is part of a series that they have read before, like Frog and Toad or Franklin books. Most importantly they asked themselves if it felt just right and if they were able to understand what they were reading. Some of the readers were really excited to discover that books that felt too challenging last year were now Just Right books. What a great feeling!

In Writer's Workshop we have begun writing personal narratives about events from our lives. We have reviewed that a story must have three parts and that the most important part is the middle. The writers have been challenging themselves to make sure that they have details in the middle and that they create a picture in their reader's mind. We end the workshop with Author's Share where the students read their writing pieces and receive constructive feedback from their peers. It is amazing to hear the thoughtful compliments and suggestions that they are able to give each other.

So far in our study of African Animals the class has been to two out of the four habitat workshops. Students are returning to class with new information each afternoon. We have a lot of naturalists and animal lovers and they are truly enjoying this in depth look at animals. During our time in the tech lab this week we went onto our school research data base KidInfo Bits and were able to listen and read about an African animal of our choice. We are going to be typing up the fascinating facts that we learned and creating a mural to display our new found knowledge and artistic representations of these incredible animals.

The highlight of the week was on Wednesday, when we got to explore the brand new iPads as a class. The students are so technologically savvy and they were able to teach me a thing or two as we explored applications for literacy, math and science. I can't wait to use these amazing tools throughout the year! Enjoy the slide show of our exploration!

We are completing our first unit in Fundations, our phonics based spelling program. For more information on the concepts that we are learning about during this time, visit the Synergy Parent Wiki on our team web page. You can click on the link for Grade 2 Fundations and get a list of words to practice at home with your child as well as an explanation of the spelling concept that we are covering.

Happy Fall!

Up, Up and Away

For the past week we have been working to create our hopes and dreams for the school year. To get inspired about creating these yearlong goals we read the book, Nobody Owns The Sky, which tells the story of Bessie Coleman, the first African American aviator. She set a goal and took small steps to make it happen. The second graders then thought about their own goals and stated what they would do to make that goal a reality in the year to come. To go along with the idea of flight, we all created hot air balloons which will hold our hopes and dreams and float above us as a constant reminder to reach for our dreams and do our best.

We also began our first unit in Bridges Mathematics. The second graders are looking at ways to sort and analyze patterns and are being introduced to the Mathematical Habit of Mind of making Conjectures and Generalizations. This is one of the effective mathematical learning experiences that the teachers have been learning about in our Best Practices in Mathematics studio days brought to us by the Teachers Development Group. In addition the students have been exploring math materials in the Bridges Work Places. You can see what amazing inventions and explorations they have been coming up with by viewing the video. I shot the footage with our new iPad!

To celebrate Dot Daywe made crowns that we wore to our first Swarm Party as a whole school in the gym on Wednesday morning. We sang our new school song and celebrated how we all help to make our school a great place to be by being safe, kind and responsible.

The students began a month long unit of study on African Animals this week. Each week they will head to a different workshop in one of the four Synergy classrooms where they will learn about animals that live in the ground, water, bush and trees and create their own lift-the-flap animal book as they travel through Africa!

We are off to a great start and look forward to a fantastic year in Synergy!

Welcome Back!

Our class of sensational second graders got off to a great start during our fist "mini" week of school. As a looping class we have the advantage of already knowing each other so we were able to hit the ground running. We are all enjoying having a new and improved and much bigger classroom space to work and play in.

We spent much of the week sharing about our summers and reviewing the rules of the school- Be Safe, Be Kind and Be Responsible. As part of the PBIS (Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports) system we will earn "warm buzzies" when we are caught demonstrating these behaviors. The buzzies are collected in the classroom and students earn a celebration when we have filled up our "Honey Jar." These are also collected as a whole school in the front office. When the big jar is full we have a school wide celebration. For more information about PBIS please visit our blog at http://abspbis.blogspot.com

We have also been reviewing the letters in the acronym C.A.R.E.S. (Cooperation, Assertion, Responsibility, Empathy and Self-Control) which is part of the Responsive Classroom model of character development. I spent much of the summer writing a children's book in which the characters (my own cat and dog!) learn about what these letters mean. The students have loved hearing my writing and have such thoughtful insights about how these words look and sound in our classroom, school and community. To learn more about Responsive Classroom visit, http://www.responsiveclassroom.org/

Next week we will begin Bridges Mathematics and Fundations and spend time during our literacy block creating our Hopes and Dreams for the school year.

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