Tuesday, May 27, 2014

All School Author's Celebration!!

Greetings Families and Friends! We sure have been busy in writing workshop with our unit on opinion writing... writing to persuade and using evidence to support our thoughts and feelings... our opinions! WOW! What an important skill to have, and we've been breaking it down, day by day, one writing workshop at a time! Practicing strategies, using linking and transition words, learning important phrases like "for example", and "in my opinion", and even, "as you can see"... Wow! Great job writers! Today, we assembled each of our smaller/classroom community of writers and merged together as a school, under the organization of our very own Sarah Burstein!! First we joined together in the gym for a slide show of our writing community... every class, every grade, one big community!! Next, teams were assembled (across the grade levels) and we went on a writing journey of authors sharing! A parade of teams went from place to place, while second grade writers shared with PK writers and first grade writers!! It was absolutely spectacular! Another outstanding day to reflect on what we've learned as writers, and to see our writing skills on display! Well done second grade.... Well done SES! Writing matters, and we proved it today!!

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Large and In Charge!! Ms. Carey's Master Teaching!

So much has been going on in 2W... it's about time we got caught up! With Ms. Carey taking over as head teacher in 2W, we've introduced some new units in math, social studies, and writing workshop!! In math workshop, we've finished our units on time and money, and have practiced composing and decomposing numbers as a strategy for problem solving! We've also learned strategies for double digit addition and subtraction with regrouping and carrying, now we just have to keep practicing so we remember and follow all the steps so that we're working with precision and care! Our new math units have focused on measurement! What are the tools we use, how to measure carefully, precisely, and why measurment is important! Learning about inches, feet, meters, centimeters, yards, as units, and how they work together is especially important! We will continue to practice what we've learned so we can solve measurement problems! In reading workshop we've added a social studies unit on maps and globes! Learning how to use a compass rose and cardinal direction, scale, and how maps and globes are used are very important! In writing workshop we celebrated all our hard work in our non-fiction/writing to teach unit with a fantastic second grade author's share! We're moving on in our next writing unit on opinion/persuasion writing! Learning about what an opinion is, how to support opinions with evidence, and writing to persuade is a skill! Our focus in writing workshop will be to practice writing with these new skills we've learned! As always, every day is full of math and morning meetings, greetings, energizers, songs, and interactive fun learning activities! Ms. Carey will continue her master teaching throughout this week, and then she will remain in our classroom until the end of the year!! How lucky are WE?!?!