Hagerty Gives Back

Today Hagerty came to visit all second graders at Westwoods! They have a program each year where they visit schools, read each class a fun and fantastic story, and then make sure each student has that story to take home to further enjoy! 

This year, the story was If I Built a Car!

Big thank you to Hagerty! Look for this book coming home today!

Journeys

Within Lesson 10, and throughout our week, we will be focusing on a variety of new concepts, but also practicing and building on topics already learned. 

We also have two new texts that are of use when it comes to new concepts being reinforced.

Jellies: The Life of Jellyfish

Genre: Informational Text

Most children are fascinated by animals - as pets, in the wild, creepy, or exotic. This informational text helps children understand what particular physical features jellyfish have that help them survive.

This text will identify reasons to support a fact or an opinion while also identifying the author's purpose for writing the text.

Splash Photography

Genre: Informational Text

Children will regularly encounter informational text in textbooks, on the internet, and through other media. This text gives factual information about a familiar topic - photography - and will expand on children's knowledge of the topic with details about underwater photography.

Students will use a diagram to enhance understanding and discuss how labels help to clarify information in a text. 

Homework

NEW HOMEWORK!

Reading Fluency

The students are bringing home a reading fluency and comprehension page for the week. 

The fluency portion of this activity I am leaving optional for students and is an added bonus if they choose to complete. Not required, but encouraged.

This activity aligns with our Six Minute Fluency in the classroom. Which means directions on the necessary process are not included, and instead the students can teach you an aspect of their day that they are now bringing home. They greatly enjoy seeing the growth in the classroom each day with how fluent they are becoming, and I know they would like to show that at home as well. If they choose to test their fluency, there is a graph that is coming along. This is a visual for students to see their results and to show growth. This graph can be left at home and does NOT need to be returned. At school we graph our results everyday, but at home with this passage, they will only need to graph the first read (cold read) and the last read (hot read). However, I did tell the students that they can choose how they want to graph results if they wanted to do it more frequently at home. The ideas were interesting :)

There are also three comprehension questions on the back that students need to answer with complete sentences and then return each Friday. 

Now students can come home and teach you one way fluency and comprehension is tested!

 Word Ladders

Math Pages

Students are practicing to further their skill of adding with and without regrouping. We have three strategies that we have learned in the classroom from what they can choose from.

Show All Totals

New Groups Above

New Groups Below

We are to the point of picking which strategy best works for ourselves. See if they can show you!

As always, if there are any problems or confusion for any part of homework, please mark the problem and send it back to school. Homework is not meant to be a stress or frustration at home. Just extra practice for students!

Six Minute Fluency

Six Minute Fluency is a program we began in the classroom. It is an added supplement to our reading block where students spend six minutes increasing their reading fluency through interactive, peer-to-peer repeated readings of high interest, leveled passages.  

 

  Students are paired with a reading buddy, where they are reading informational text passages based on social studies and science content. This helps to enhance their background knowledge and content area vocabulary. Each set of partners are given a new passage each Monday to read for the week. Partners work together to track one anothers reading errors and progress. To follow, they help each other solve errors, graph words read correctly within one minute, and visually see fluency growth on their graph throughout the week.

Ask your child to further explain their experience of Six Minute Fluency.

Thanksgiving Fun

I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing holiday break! Thanksgiving came and went, but I wanted to post all the fun we had leading up to the big day of thanks and feasting.

In addition to all our hard work and learning we made time for a few extra Thanksgiving activities. Hard to resist :)

Thanksgiving Thankful Book

Very awesome activity to watch the students work through. They used their knowledge of sentence structure to have two solid sentences about what they are thankful for in school, at home, outside, and even for one of the many talents they have! I hope they came home as excited as I was to share their sweet, kind and thoughtful ideas!

 

 

 

 

Place Value Turkeys

We took what we have been learning in math and made it into turkeys!

 

 

Directed Turkey Drawing

Students had to follow step by step directions as we all drew a Thanksgiving Turkey together. It is quick and structured time, where they have to focus, listen and then follow the correct direction to piece all steps together in order to make a piece of art of their own. This gives students the ability to practice listening skills and following one-two step directions to learning.

When we are done is when they get to add their own personal flare to their art! 

 

 

Thanksgiving Scavenger Hunt

To teach the students more about the history of Thanksgiving, they went on a hunt! There were 18 facts about Thanksgiving that were spread around. They had clues and had to connect the clue to the fact with a buddy.

 

 

All projects came home with students the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to enjoy and to show families!