Blog & Newsletters

Reader’s & Writer’s Workshop The students have been working hard to learn expectations and routines in workshop. A HUGE part of 2nd grade is learning how to independently function as a reader and writer! Next week we will kick off our curriculum with the Units of Study in reading and writing. This year the instruction will be delivered a little bit different due to the hybrid plan! The district has purchased videos where a co-teacher (expert) will teach the lesson.

Community Building We had a wonderful first week in room 248. The kids seemed so happy to be here and loved interacting with their peers. We spent a lot of time this week talking about norms, building relationships with each other and getting back into the routine and schedule of school! Please work with your child to establish routines and norms at home (consistent bedtime routine, morning routine, hybrid routine, etc.

March is Reading Month Every Thursday in the month of March we will have Forest Hills Football players come and read books with our class! The kids just LOVED having the high school players come in and read with them! We can’t wait to see them next week! We also finished a class read aloud: The Wild Robot. The students have LOVED this book! Every day they begged for us to read it and we finally finished it this morning.

Readers Workshop Last week we culminated our 3rd reading unit which had us amping up our reading power by reading stronger and longer books! On Monday we dove head first into our next unit titled: Accelerating Readers Growth in Longer Fictional Books. As we start to wrap up our 3rd quarter in 2nd grade, the readers are reading so much more fluently and stronger since the beginning of the year!

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.

Reader’s Workshop This week we moved our focus from fluency over to comprehension. Readers have been loving reading “twin books” with their reading partners. These are books that I have 2 copies of and the students set goals with their reading partner on how they will each individually read. Then they meet up once they have reached that target. Readers then discuss the chapter they just read. We learned how useful post-its can be to track our thinking!

Reader’s Workshop WOW! Readers really took off with their stamina and love for reading this week. A shift happened, where kids were begging to have Reader’s Workshop. Readers learned about literary language and found it all over our books! Whether an author talked about a “fork in the road” or “her head was spinning from all the new information.” 2nd grade readers have to really stop and think to keep tabs on their comprehension.

Reader’s Workshop Reader’s learned that they need to read at a pace that is not too fast and not too slow- one that allows them to understand what they are reading. If you notice your child reading too quickly, help make them aware of their pace. If students are reading too fast, their comprehension lacks and their accuracy. Students who are reading too slow and choppy, the book may be too difficult.

Readers Workshop This week we continued our work on increasing our fluency. Readers learned that dialogue tags (he replied, he whined, he yelled, etc.) can help readers read dialogue with expression. It’s important for us to pay attention to the tags to know how the character was feeling and we can “talk like the characters.” Readers also learned how to match their voices to the meaning of the text. They have loved working on their fluency and feeling empowered as readers!

Author’s Celebration We had a wonderful time yesterday celebrating our writing at our culminating Author’s Celebration! This week writers spent time revising, editing and publishing one piece of their writing. Writers all wrote nonfiction books but everyone had a choice on how they wanted to create their books. Some of the writers wrote how to books, chapter books, or even question and answer books. Tuesday, your child will bring home their published piece of writing, the rest of the writing from the unit and a rubric.