This week in 2nd grade...

Hello all! It is the THIRD week of school! I can hardly believe it! This week we have some awesome events planned and I am thrilled to share them with the students on Monday! Here's what you can expect to hear about this week in 2nd grade...

Reading

Last week in Daily 5, we made it to 25 minutes and 30 seconds of stamina reading! Because of the awesome progress we made, we began practicing stamina for Work on Writing! We made it to 4 minutes and 45 seconds as of Friday, and will be working this week to beat our stamina time and get better. Our goal, much like reading, is to get to 20+ minutes of stamina time.

I will also begin testing this week in reading. At Beulah Ralph, as well as all of CPS, we conduct the DRA2. This is a reading assessment that digs into students comprehension and fluency as a reader. I can then level the students (I do not make the leveled information available to the students, it is rather for my knowledge) to help with grouping for reading groups and picking teacher choice books that will be on their level. We will also be conducting AIMSweb assessments, but not until a later date!

Math

Last week in math we tested over topic 1. I have these tests graded and will be handing those back at Get the Scoop night! The topic 1 test was a review from 1st grade topics, which is why you didn't see a review sheet come home. We instead reviewed in class the day of the test. I am using this test almost as a "pre-test" to let me know where I will need to focus instruction this year. The topics the test covered are all topics we will cover again in 2nd grade. You can use this test as a guide for your student's understanding of three topics: addition, subtraction, and fact families, and it can help influence which topics you may need to practice at home when they arise! If you have any more questions about this "test" please feel free to contact me.

This week, we will begin topic 2. This topic focuses on different addition strategies! We will look at adding 0, 1, and 2 onto numbers as well as adding doubles. This topic could also be considered a slight review of 1st grade. It gives us another chance to look at addition for those students who needed it, and will provide opportunities for students to go deeper into their understanding of addition!

Writing

We are still working with Lucy Caulkin's Small Moments writing. This means the tiny topic notebooks you saw come home last week, will still be coming home again this week! This week our instruction will be focused on making sure our writing makes sense, setting goals for our writing, revision, and discovering and attempting writer's crafts from our master writer Jane Yolen, who writes Owl Moon. Each day students will have an opportunity to work on their writing as well as confer with me. 

Science

We began our science unit on Ecosystems. This week we will be planting seeds and will also look into how seeds are spread/travel and create new plants. 

IMPORTANT REMINDERS/EVENTS

• Get the Scoop- August 30th
• Please remember to send snack everyday if your student wishes to have snack! I have some goldfish left, which I have been using when they forget and get hungry, but I'm definitely running low :)
• Subscribe to our blog!
• Follow us on TWITTER! @msklister
• Class Events
• Library Orientation: Tuesday, 12:15
• Counselor: Thursday 2:00

Thanks so much for all you do!

Katie

Pictures from last week! (I promise I'll get better about uploading these :))

Read to Self Stamina Building!

Exploring Math Manipulatives!

2nd Grade Science Update

This week has been so exciting for us as 2nd grade scientists. We began our unit on ecosystems, which will conclude in October with a bird field trip (more information on this later!!)! This week specifically, we have been up to a multitude of things!

Tuesday started with a pre-test over plants. This gives me a starting point to influence instruction!

Wednesday was a blast. We took 20 minutes and explored the outdoors. Students were told to explore nature as a whole, and collect some of their findings. We discussed leaving nature in nature is best, and how it is unfair to pick up living things/items. I was pleasantly surprised with how much we found in the small field behind the school!

Thursday (today), we took the opportunity to look over our findings from our nature walk. We spent over 40 minutes consumed with the items in our bags! I had students drawing pictures and hypothesizing what they could be looking at, all while describing what each item in their bag looked like, felt like, and smelled like. It was so fun to hear students guesses as to what they had picked up. This also is a good lead in to using details in their writing which will come later next week!

Friday (tomorrow), we will plan our grass seeds and watch them grow! Using our science notebook, we will be able to record what we notice as the plant grows and changes! I cannot wait to share some of this amazing work with you!

If you happen to work in the field of biology (preferably with plants or animals) and would like to come share one day about what you do, send me an email, klister@cpsk12.org, or a message on Remind!

That's all for now!

Very Important Information!

Parents,
I am aware that some of you may want to be notified when the blog is updated. This will be the best way to keep in touch with what we are doing in class! To subscribe by email, look to the top right-hand corner of this blog page. You should be able to see "Follow by Email" and a box to type your email into. Simply type in your email and hit submit and you're good to go!

Thanks for staying in touch!
Katie

Writing Update!

Today, we began looking into small moments. You may realize your child came home with a tiny topic notebook! These are used to capture the tiny moments (seed moments, see below) they want to remember, that would make great stories! I asked them to carry these with them to make sure they catch every small moment they deem important. Their goal is to record this memory, or snapshot, in 3 to 5 words!

Tomorrow, we will dig into seed vs. watermelons (big picture vs. tiny snapshots), and will continue this week to look at how to stretch those seeds, or snapshots, into stories across multiple pages! I cannot wait to see what they come up with, and share your student's writing with you!

Watermelon vs. Seed Stories:

These are posters we will use to talk about watermelon vs. seed stories.

This week in 2nd grade...

Happy Monday!

We had such a great day today! All of our routines and procedures are coming together nicely, and I am so excited to really get a feel for the year ahead. On the blog, my goal is to update you on our progress as a class! To begin...

Writing

We began our first unit of study today! We are focusing on small moments and turning those into long stories (stretching). You will see your student come home with a tiny topic notebook (within the next few days). Their goal for these notebooks is to capture small moments using short phrases to remember the moment they are capturing! Today, we unveiled our writer's notebooks and will begin writing in those shortly! More about writing to come, along with some examples, hopefully later this week!

Math

We are well into our math topic! Our first topic is a review of addition and subtraction from first grade. We are asking students draw pictures and really think through each problem. We talk a lot about parts and wholes and how those help us know that we are doing addition or subtraction. The test for this topic (since it is a review unit we will review and test on the same day) is on Thursday. If you would like to practice at home, giving short word problems or simple addition/subtraction sentences are a great place to start. As a class, we struggled more with subtraction vs. addition (to be expected), but are doing an awesome job working through these struggles, and turning them into real learning! We have tomorrow and Wednesday, and will use this time to practice more with these types of problems!

Reading

We began our Daily 5 station routines this previous week and into this week. We are working right now on building our reading stamina. Today, we made it to 12 minutes!! We were so excited!! Our goal is to make it to 20 minutes as a whole class with no distractions. I will begin introducing the other 4 stations (foundation lessons) throughout the week this week, and we will work for a stamina goal for each of these in the coming weeks! 

Classroom Community

As a whole class, we have been working hard to make sure we are a community of learners! This includes learning more about one another and about what we enjoy. A lot of our activities last week were focused around community building, and we will continue those into this week. Today, we worked on an activity called "Save Sam." Ask your students about this, because we had SO much fun! It helped us get to know one another and work together as a team. See below for pictures :)

That's all for now! Thank you for sharing your kids with me everyday! As always, feel free to contact me with any concerns!

WOW!

First thing's first, WELCOME TO OUR BLOG! How exciting!! I can use this space to post updates about our learning and time together. Please subscribe so you are always in the know. I will try to post 2 to 3 times per week, and this will ideally replace a newsletter!

WOW! What an amazing night meeting so many awesome families and most importantly, awesome students! I am so excited to get started on Tuesday. We are going to have an amazing year, I can feel it!

I know I loaded everyone up with information, but I wanted to post a couple reminders (and pictures, of course!).

• If your kiddo didn't bring supplies tonight, no worries, just bring them the first day of school!
• Room Parent forms can come back with your students at your earliest convenience. I do need each form back, even if you do not volunteer, so our room parents are able to reach out to you with events and notifications!
• Remember to look through the information in your folder. In particular:
• We are a NUT FREE classroom. Please reference the sheet in your folder for more specific information. Students are more than welcome to bring snacks, as long as they are NUT FREE COMPLETELY! I will be checking snacks, and if your child's snack includes nuts, is processed/manufactured with nuts, etc., it will be sent back home! Thank you for your help keeping everyone safe!
• Please do not forget to send your child with the 4x6 framed photo.We will be using them to get to know each other! Contact me if you have any concerns!
• Our supply wish list is a perfect way for you to donate to our classroom and our success! If you would like to contribute, send the items to school with your child! Thanks in advance for your donation!
• I sent out Remind invites to everyone who's contact information I had! If you didn't get one, shoot me an email and we will figure out the issue. This will be a very great way to contact me if you need to. As always, email works too!

I'm so excited for Tuesday, and as always, feel free to contact me if you need to! Also, be watching Twitter for reminders/updates! 

See you bright and early TUESDAY :) Thanks!

PS. Attached are photos I was able to snap tonight. We will also take a photo the first day, so if I missed you (I missed a lot of people unfortunately, completely my fault), no big deal!