Exciting Changes

Sorry for the lack of a post last week.  Being gone for three days was exhausting, and it completely slipped my mind!  I had the privilege of attending the Ohio Educational Technology conference in Columbus last Monday through Wednesday with three other second grade teachers, and we came back with a lot of ideas!  It was definitely worth missing our first and only snow day!  Many of the ideas won't be able to be implemented right away because they are beyond the current budget of our district, but it was exciting to see what is going on in other districts around the state and to see what we may be able to do in the future.  As I finish sorting out all of the information I have swarming around in my brain right now, I will be sending home a note (probably early next week) with more details about what I am able to implement (free of charge!) right now and how we will be able to use technology to further our education in second grade this year.  I will say this, though...the kids are going to LOVE it!

One thing that I realized I want to do through my weekly posts are to give you a little more insight as to what is happening in the classroom.  Rather than giving a general summary of the week and the topics we  are studying, I'm going to try to break it down for you, day by day, so you can have a clearer picture of what we do each day in second grade.  I'm anxious for feedback, so if you are reading, jot me a note in your child's assignment book (or, better yet, leave a comment right here on the blog) letting me know that you're reading and what you think of the new format.  I will have a treat for your child on Monday (and Monday only) if you do!  Here goes...

On Monday, we had no school!  Wahoo!

On Tuesday, we introduced our new spelling words.  Our words this week had the eer and ear spelling patterns.  We really put emphasis on the pattern this week, as I'm seeing that many students are not able to transfer that pattern onto their weekly tests.  I think it will really help with studying at home if you can point out the pattern to your child while helping study the words.  We added the "tion" hunk and chunk to our Phonics Dance board.  We also introduced vocabulary words for the week.  This week's words were supplies, crop, provide, earn, committee, and experiments.  We always begin with a stoplight activity on the first day so I can get a feel for what the students already know about the words and how much time we will need to spend on learning them that week.  You can see this on the first page of their vocabulary packets that come home at the end of the week.  We used our Storytown book to practice using a Table of Contents (though my afternoon class didn't get to this until Thursday), and we worked on our president reports that we began last week with Mrs. Harpel.

On Wednesday, I was out with strep.  The students practiced spelling words on their dry erase boards, read our story for the week - The Life of George Washington Carver, and discussed nonfiction text features (such as headings, pictures, captions, etc.) using the story.  They completed a graphic organizer highlighting the three major headings in the story and a detail from each.  The students answered R.A.P. questions using vocabulary words, which you can see on the third page of the vocabulary packet.  Again, we worked on president reports.

On Thursday, we had our spelling test.  We practiced by playing Sparkle first.  We reviewed the pattern for the week again.  We added the "sion" hunk and chunk to our Phonics Dance board.  We finished up the vocabulary packet and made a vocabulary cube that we used on Friday to review before our test.  The morning class finished up the graphic organizers from Wednesday, and the afternoon class worked on president reports and practiced using the Table of Contents in the Storytown book.

On Friday, we played catch-up.  Many students had president reports to continue working on or finish up, and many others had Star of the Week letters from the past few weeks to finish.  We did use the vocabulary cubes from Thursday to review for the vocabulary test.  We did not take the comprehension test on Friday because I didn't feel like the students had enough exposure to the story at that point, since the week was short and I was out one day.  We will take that test early next week.  We continued to discuss using the Table of Contents.

On the agenda for next week is a review week for spelling.  We have some more catching up to do, but we have planned to take two weeks for the next story, so I will not be starting the vocabulary packets until later next week or the following Monday.  There will not be a vocabulary test or comprehension test next Friday.  We will continue discussing nonfiction text features, and we will work on using both the glossary and index in our Storytown books as well.  It's been a while since we talked about adjectives, so we will go back to those too.  I'm hoping to finish up the president reports and send those home late next week.  The kids have worked so hard on them!

Spelling words for next week will be:
know, noise, tough, phone, breath, health, ready, bread, soil, voice, last, school, father, keep, tree, never, start, city, earth, eyes
Challenge words will be:
wrote, enough, photograph, instead, breakfast, sweater, choice, enjoy, cheerful, disappear, last, school, father, keep, tree, never, start, city, earth, eyes

Our specials schedule for next week will be:
Monday - art
Tuesday - music
Wednesday - gym
Thursday - library
Friday - music

* Readings logs are due on Wednesday, February 29th with a minimum of 300 minutes required.  These are a grade, and five points are deducted for logs that are turned in late.  This is the easiest A your child can get in my class, and the only homework grade.  Don't forget to turn it in!

I'm impressed if you actually made it through this entire post - it was a long one!  Enjoy the weekend!