Over the past two weeks we have been stretching ourselves in many different directions. From project work, to math activities, to building reading stamina, the students are pushing themselves to do great work and I can see them growing every day! We are very excited to share our work with you this upcoming week at SLCs!
Here are some highlights from our weeks:
Informational paragraphs: The writing process
Before actually writing our paragraphs, we talked about what exactly is a paragraph and why to we write in this format? We watched this brain pop jr. video to get our conversation started, and looked at a model paragraph to explore the components of a paragraph. Our paragraphs generally follow this structure:
Topic Sentence. Evidence. Tell me more (detail). Evidence. Tell me more. Evidence. Tell me more. Closing Sentence.
Once students learned this structure, they took their notes and turned them into paragraph form to create their first drafts. Then, it was time for our favorite step of the writing process, Edit and Revise! We had a fun time singing our edit and revise song in a conga line with Ms. Kegley's class :)
For this writing piece, we used this checklist, but also added a few new components to the editing process. First, students learned about transition words to add to their writing. Transition words are important because they connect one idea to the next, making it easier for the reader to follow the author's message. We brainstormed a list of transition words and looked at a couple of our example paragraphs. We decided that transition words should always go before giving evidence, and are sometimes needed before a tell me more sentence. Students went back to their own work and added transition words in as needed.
The Students also learned how to edit their work using a colored pencil so that it makes it easier to see the changes we need to make for our second drafts. Finally, the students learned how to use carrots ^ to indicate where they need to add information and transition words into their first drafts.
After an extensive editing and revising process, it was time for students to write their final drafts! I was blown away by how the students really took their time to craft these final drafts. I know they are so excited to share these informational paragraphs with you at their Student Led Conferences next week!
2nd Grade Fish Art installation
Previously, Mrs. Fuentes's class shared their expertise with the 2nd grade about the anatomy of a fish. The students got together in their small groups of three (one student from each 2nd grade class) to choose the different elements for their group's clay fish. Now, it is our class's turn to be the experts! With Mrs. Vinetz, the students individually made prototypes of the clay fish in preparation to lead their small group through the process.
Math
We are continuing to build number sense in a variety of different ways:
1.Math About Me: This was an activity we did this week that helped students recognize the relevance of numbers in their daily lives. The students identified important numerical qualities about themselves, such as their age, number of siblings, and height. Students used drawings, words and even some creative number sentences to tell you about these personal facts. We are excited to share this work with you at SLCs!
2. Number Talks: Every Monday and Friday we start our day with a number talk. We are still in the early stages of the practice so it hasn't quite developed into its full form, but this is what it looks like right now: The students take the number of the day (usually how many days we have been in school) and spend 5 minutes representing that number in as many ways as they can think of. I noticed that many students use tally marks, write number sentences, break the number down into 10s and 1s, draw symbols in pattern that equal the number, and tell if it is an even or odd number. At the end of the five minutes, students choose their favorite representation and share it with a partner.
3. Hundreds chart explorations: This week we introduced a new math material: Hundreds charts! Students practiced completing a hundreds chart, highlighting patterns they see with the numbers on the chart, and solving hundreds chart puzzles by following a series of clues.
4. Math Card Games: We learned a new math card game! This game is called Closest to 20. In this game, each player chooses 3 of the 5 cards in their hand to create a sum of 20 or as close to 20 as possible, but they can't go over! The player whose sum is closest to 20 wins the hand.
Daily 5
We introduced the Read to Someone rotation into our Daily 5 practice! This rotation often quickly becomes students' favorite rotation, because they get to share a good book with a friend :) I was very impressed with how quickly students picked up on the practice and demonstrated expected behaviors for Read to Someone. Students were taking turns and using strategies like rock paper scissors to decide what book to read first. The student reading was using a strong, clear reading voice, and the student not reading was sitting next to their partner following along.
Read Aloud
We finished our first book, A to Z mysteries: The White Wolf. Students voted and our next read aloud will be Mr. Popper's Penguins! We will start this book next week.
Social Smarts: Group Plan
The social language term we explored this week is called the Group Plan. This term refers to anytime there is a set plan laid out that the whole class or a small group of students is expected to follow. We follow group plans all day long, starting with morning meeting. In this instance, the group plan is to follow the four steps of our morning meeting, and the expectation is that everyone participates and follows our class norms for how to participate in this meeting. We even have a group plan for how we are expected to engage in our independent work. Furthermore, as we start our small group work with other 2nd graders in other classes for our Art project, it is important that we understand the value of a plan, and how to work together to follow the group plan.
To better understand this term, the students were broken up into groups of three and asked to follow a very specific group plan. The students had to work together to read each step, and complete each little task. We reflected afterwards about what made a group successful in this activity and in their ability to follow the plan. Here is what some of the students said:
- Do rock paper scissors or eenie-meenie-miney-mo to figure out who will go or choose one person from your group - Lea
- Focus on following the group plan and work on what you are supposed to do. - Amyah
- Don’t just say you don’t want to do it, sometimes you just have to. - Amyah
- Keep trying until you get it. - Stella C.
- Work hard and persevere. - Casey
- You can say 1,2,3 to make sure everyone start at the same time. - William
- Follow role models in a group. - Cole
School Community: Trash pickup
After several conversations with our outstanding school custodians, Mr. Jose, Mr. Pasqual, and Mr. Martin, we realized that our whole school community needs to work harder to take care of our beautiful school. We decided to tackle our outdoor eating and play space first, because there is often so much trash floating around the picnic tables and jungle gym by the end of the day. As of this week, each grade level will be responsible for cleaning up the outdoor space at the end of the day. The 2nd grade will go out on Thursday afternoons, and this week we filled two whole trash bags!
Here are some pictures from our weeks: