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.

Math Morning

This picture collage customized with Smilebox

Thank you so much to all of you who were able to join in a morning of fun and learning at the Synergy Math Morning event. It was a great turn out and the students loved being able to be the teachers for the morning.

We ended the month by sharing our Realistic Fiction Trouble Stories with our book buddies. Before we were able to publish our pieces we had to make sure that we had all of the elements that we had been practicing this month. The writers needed to revise and be sure that the story had details about the character and how the character was feeling when the trouble happened. (Joe was terrified when he got lost!) The writers also had to revise their story and add something interesting about the setting of the story. (The basement was cold and smelly.) They needed to make sure that it was clear how the trouble got fixed (resolution). Then they needed to edit for spelling, punctuation, and clarity. The book buddies loved hearing our stories and we even able to offer some thoughtful feedback about how the second grade writers could make their stories even better.

Next month in Readers and Writers Workshop, we will be learning about Non-Fiction Conventions and will be using them to help us read non-fiction texts and write How-To Pieces to teach a reader about a procedure.

Stay Tuned!