Mrs. Bice's Second Grade

Reader’s Workshop

We kicked off a new unit this week titled: Series Book Clubs. Readers will become experts on a particular series of books. I assigned kids different series to focus on and they have been working in a Club to become experts. We began by them collecting information about the main characters in their series. One way readers can do this is by paying close attention to what they learn about the characters. We also learned that readers can learn a lot about their character by thinking about how the character responds to problems. We dug in deep to understand our characters to think about how the character usually feels. This whole week really challenged the students to really focus on their comprehension while reading their series. They have loved discussing their series within their clubs!

Writer’s Workshop

We also kicked off our opinion unit in writing, titled Writing About Reading. Writers will learn about opinion writing and how to write about their favorite books. Students learned that most writers love books, and they use their writing to share their ideas about books they love. They often specifically write letters about their opinions about characters in order to bring them to life. Students practiced rehearsing to talk about some of their favorite characters and books and what makes them so incredible! This really helped them in sharing their opinions in their writing! I can’t wait to see all the wonderful ways they tie in their favorite books to their writing!

Phonics

Vowels, vowels and more vowels! Over the next few sessions we will be focusing on long vowel sounds. We will be fine tuning some important vowel teams and making sure that the 2nd graders can tackle any vowel team that the come across! The “word builders” began a notebook where they will help to create a vowel manual. We began by creating a page and recorded the most common ways to spell a long A sound. We read a letter and some poems and searched high and low for the long A sound. When your child comes to a difficult word, be sure to help them decode it and think about everything they know about vowels!

Technology

During the last quarter I will be having 30 minutes each week where I will teach the kids some new “tech. tips!“This week we began by learning how to use their email. Students now know how to compose and send an e-mail. The practiced by sending me their first e-mail! There next task will be to email me back and then they will send an e-mail to a friend within the class. The students learned a lot about Digital Citizenship this year and appropriate ways to communicate with friends over the internet. They are able to access their e-mail account at home by logging into their Clever account.

Inclusion

The month of April is dedicated to autism awareness, but at Meadow Brook we wanted to broaden our scope this week to inclusion. Inclusion means giving equal access to all people. At Meadow Brook we would like to honor this month as a time to bring awareness and acceptance to all ability levels - physically, mentally, and emotionally. We want to provide many examples of people who have lived full lives using their unique abilities. We read some incredible stories about real life heroes who overcame difficult situations!

Science

We began our last science unit of the year on plant and animal relationships! Scientists started the week by learning about the whirligig beetle and a dragonfly. We watched videos and observed their movements, bodies and habitats. We asked a ton of questions and learned some of our answers through discussion and drawing our own conclusions based upon our observations. We finished the week by reading a picture book, Around the Pond. It is a beautiful story about all the animals and plans that live around a pond! The students loved talking about all the animals and the unique habitat that they live in!