Mrs. Bice's Second Grade

Author’s Celebration

We spent a majority of the week revising our writing and getting it ready for our Author’s Celebration: Starbooks! Over the past few weeks writers learned about the art of opinion writing! They were asked to nominate books for awards! They stated their opinion, gave reasons and really tried to convince the reader that their book was incredible. Writers also spent time working in partnerships to revise their work and learn from each other. They created props/artifacts to go with their writing, based on the book that they warded! Students had complete autonomy on creating something to accompany their book!

Yesterday, we had an amazing Author’s Celebration to celebrate all of their hard work. Author’s shared their writing with a family member than they were able to browse around and read their fellow writers awards. We culminated the event with an apple juice toast and Oreos! What a great way to finish out our unit on opinion writing! Special thanks to all the parents who were able to make it to our celebration! We know it’s not easy but appreciate you showing the writer’s so much love!

Students will bring their writing (from the unit) home next week! I need to keep their work to assess it for report cards before I send it home with them! Thanks for your understanding!

Reader’s Workshop

On Monday readers had a choice to make on which skill set they wanted to get better at! We looked at everything we have focused on during this unit and decided to create some Reading Clubs. The following we titles of the reading clubs: literary language, keeping track in longer books, making our reading more fluent. Within their Reading Clubs, students needed to create a plan, list tools needed and come up with some next steps/action items. I have seen a ton of growth within the classroom when students can discuss and chat about their books vs. sitting and reading all the time. We finished off the week with collaborative groups creating posters to teach other readers their top 5 tips when reading a chapter book! Check out Seesaw to see your child’s poster.

Self Management

This week we began to learn about self management! We read a few books about self regulation and how we can manage ourselves. This morning we talk about some of the different feelings we have! Then we discussed that sometimes our body sends us different cues on based on how we are feeling. For example if we are feeling angry, we might start to feel our palms sweat and our face get read. Then we discussed what some of our triggers are! For example we already know that one thing that triggers us to feel angry is someone ignoring us at recess or talking over us in class! The more that the students can understand their physical cues and what triggers them, the more likely they are to have coping strategies to deal with these feelings! Please continue the conversation at home! We will continue to talk about self management for the next few weeks!

Game Changers

Today we had Game Changers! Students from the high school came to teach the 2nd graders about integrity! They listened to two different books and compared the characters and how they showed integrity! It has been so great to have these students come and work with the class! Next month, we will have our last session with them.

Whale Tales

Please turn in the pink Whale Tales Field Trip form that was sent home earlier this week! This is an amazing opportunity for all the 2nd graders within Forest Hills to learn water safety skills. If your child has not turned one in, I am sending another one in their folders tonight.