March 24-28

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Conferences start tomorrow!  They will continue Wednesday and Thursday.  Your conference day and time should have gone home with your child on Friday afternoon.  Please come right at your scheduled time.  If you have any questions, please let me know.

BIOGRAPHY DAY IS COMING UP!   On Tuesday, April 1 (one week from tomorrow), Team Blowey will be dressing up as the famous person they have been studying.  Please don’t buy anything for this day!  Dressing up could be as simple as a hat.  These items can also be made, for example, out of construction paper or other similar materials.  If you or you child are stuck and can’t figure out what to wear for Biography Day, please let me know!  I would be happy to help with ideas!  Our day will consist of visiting some first grade classrooms to tell them a little bit about the people we have dressed up as and we will also be presenting our research to Team Blowey.  I will send home a reminder (stating the person your child has been studying) with your child tomorrow.

Mrs. Thibodeau will be coming to our classroom on Thursday!  She will be discussing some disability awareness topics with Team Blowey.

Do you want to participate in the science fair?  Sign up sheets are due by Friday!  The fair itself will be on April 3.

Let your drawings skills be shared with the community!  Remember to design a bookmark for the GNG literacy night!  The winning bookmark will be one of two designs given out to all students who attend literacy night.  Bookmark entries are due by Friday!

We are still missing  A LOT  of flat kids!  If you could please remind your friends and family members that Team Blowey is anxiously awaiting the arrival of all of our flat friends, it would be greatly appreciated!  

This week in...

New and improved Daily 5:  We are really digging into the knitty gritty parts of second grade.  In an effort to spice things up a little bit and challenge Team Blowey, I decided to revisit the Daily 5 and make them better!  Here is what your child can expect:

Read to Self:  This is the independent reading for daily 5.  Students will still be reading just right books from either their book boxes or on RAZ kids.  However, students will now be expected to complete at least one book report in class each month.  They are also required to take the comprehension quizzes on RAZ kids.  Students work on RAZ kids at least once a week in the classroom.

Read to Someone:  This is one area where we really switched things up.  There is now a read to someone menu with several fluency activities for Team Blowey to work on.  During super speedy sight words, teammates will work with a partner to read lists of sight words as a team.  Their goal is to get faster and faster the more they practice.  In reading around the room, students will put out an emotion card (frustrated, ashamed, excited, etc) and read words and phrases around the room with that kind of voice.  In copy cat reading, students will both read from the same book.  One student will read a chunk of the book, then the next student will read the same junk, with as much or more expression.  ln buddy reading, students will now use a rubric to assess their own reading as well as assessing their partner’s reading.  Then, from that assessment, they will pick one area to work on.  When they feel like they are ready, they will check in with each other again to see if their reading has improved.  During alphabet flow, students are reading the letters of the alphabet with various kinds of punctuation thrown into the middle of it.  Students might have to read something like:  abc.  defghi.  jklmnop.  qrs.  tuvwxyz.  They will read the letters with the appropriate voice changes and pauses.  We have also added some more poetry to the classroom, where students can practice a poem over and over again and then perform it for the class.

Word Work:  We will still be working with our phonics and spelling words at school, however, now we are doing more with our weekly vocabulary words.  Instead of just defining them, building connections, and searching for them in stories, students will also have to complete one activity that shows they know what each word means.  Some students will demonstrate their understanding in sentences.  Some students may choose to demonstrate their understanding in pictures.  Both are acceptable.  In addition, all students will be using word collectors to collect new and interesting words from their reading adventures.

Writing:  Now students will be using focused menus to help them meet their common core writing standards.  There are three menus for each type of writing:  personal narrative, explanatory, and opinion.  With each menu, students are given a choice of what to write about as well as two or three writing goals they should be focusing on.  On all of the menus there is a convention checklist for the things students should be using in their writing all of the time like capital letters where they belong and correct ending punctuation.  Team Blowey was also given sheets to help guide themselves through the editing and revising process.  

Listen to Reading:  Students will continue to use RAZ kids as one way to listen to reading, but students are also allowed to use other online resources such as tumblebooks to listen to reading.  When a student finishes listening to a story, they will fill in a check-in sheet to demonstrate that they understood the story.  If the story they listened to was fiction, they will talk about the story elements.  If the story they listened to was nonfiction, they will write what the topic of the story was as well as one interesting fact that they learned.  

We spent all of last week practicing these new challenges so that Team Blowey understands the activities and the expectations.  This week, students will begin to have Daily 5 choice time with these new expectations incorporated.

Phonics:  We will be practicing the /u/ sound with the spelling patterns oo, ui, ew, ue, and oe.  Here are our focus words:  root, boot, suit, fruit, clue, glue, flew, new, shoe, and canoe.  

Vocabulary:  Our new words are:  violent, beware, prevent, uprooted, destroy, and grasslands.  We will define these words and build connections to them.  Then, we’ll search for them in the short story Wild Weather Hits Florida by Lisa O’Neil.  

Comprehension:  This week we will revisit the idea of making and confirming predictions.  When we make a prediction, we are using the text, pictures, and what we already know to make a guess about what will happen next.  When we confirming predictions, we read on in the story and use the text to see whether or not our prediction was correct.  We’ll practice this skill while we read Super Storms by Seymour Simon.

Grammar:  We will be working with irregular verbs again.  These words are irregular because they have special forms in the past tense.  For example, the past-tense of come is came and the past-tense form of run is ran. 

Writing:  We will be putting the finishing touches on our biography posters this week!  Team Blowey will have a portrait of the famous person they are studying, when they were born and when/if they died, a sentence about their claim to fame, an interesting fact, and three illustrated important events from their life.  They will use these posters to give a presentation on their famous person next week.

Math:  Beginning tomorrow, Team Blowey will be moving to other classroom to meet their specific needs for our new math unit.  In this new unit, students will be adding and subtracting numbers within 100 and within 1,000.  They will use this skill to answer one and two step word problems.  Here is an example of our checklist:  

Learning Target:   I can use my knowledge of place value to help me add and subtract numbers.	I can do it!
I can add fluently within 100 using strategies such as drawings, 100 chart, number line, and tens and ones.
I can subtract fluently within 100 using strategies such as drawings, 100 chart, number line, and tens and ones.
I can solve the same addition and subtraction problem using two different strategies.
I can add up to four two-digit numbers using strategies I know.
I  can solve addition word problems within 100 using strategies I know.
I  can solve subtraction word problems within 100 using strategies I know.
I  can solve word problems with unknown change within 100 using strategies I know.

Here is an example of our extension checklist:

Learning Target: I can extend my knowledge of place value to help me add and subtract.	I can do it!
I can add two three-digit numbers using strategies I know.
I can subtract two three-digit numbers using strategies I know.
I can use the relationship between addition and subtraction to show a fact family in four different number sentences.

Each member of Team Blowey will be put into a group with similar needs to help them meet this new learning target.  We will be meeting as these groups three days a week for the next few weeks.    The other two days of the week will be used for review, math facts, time and money.

Scholastic News:  This week, Team Blowey will be reading about clouds!  We will learn how clouds are formed as well as different types of clouds.  Then, we’ll use a chart to answer questions about cumulus, stratus, cirrus, and cumulonimbus clouds.  

Science:  To go along with our comprehension story as well as the Scholastic News issue this week, we are reading Weather Words and What They Mean by Gail Gibbons.  We are collecting these weather words and talking about what they mean everyday.  Then, these words are added to our weather anchor chart so we can reference them often.  This is the kick-off to our weather unit!  Stay tuned for some more weather fun!