Beautiful apple drawings from art class
We are working very hard on gaining independence when it comes to these areas:
Reading to self
Writing
Reading to someone
This week we introduced the "Read to Someone" portion of our Daily 5 approach to independence. It takes a lot of hard work and practice to be able read to someone successfully without anything else getting in our way and without needing help from a teacher. We focus on these rules: 1. Get started right away. 2. Read the whole time. 3. Stay in one spot. 4. EEKK (sit Elbow to Elbow and Knee to Knee) 5. Read from one book and take turns by page.
We also discussed what to do if our partner needs help with a word. We say "Coaching or More Time?" We can offer help with a word if our partner asks for a coach, or we can wait patiently if our partner just needs more time figuring out a word. We are also learning strategies to use if neither of the partners knows the words. For example we can reread the sentence or we can read the word in chunks.
Next week we will be introducing ways to increase comprehension.
Partners are selected by the teacher according to reading level.
This week we wrote a three paragraph report on our neighborhoods. Monday we practiced writing a report together about our playground. What do we see? What do we hear? What and who lives here?
We are now using math mountain cards to help us learn our addition and subtraction facts where a teen number is the total. Here a student is making her own math mountain card. The teen total is written at the top of the mountain with the two parts at the bottom points of the triangle.
With partners or small groups, one student will cover one angle with his/her thumb while the other students guesses what number is under the thumb. This gives the students another mode of practice besides the traditional flash card.
Here a student uses our number line to solve a math mountain fact.
This week we introduced our fast finisher activities. If a student is completely finished with all assignments, they may chose to read in the book nook or complete one of our fast finisher activities. This week's activities were all based on increasing comprehension skills. Each of our fast finisher baggies had a short story to read and comprehension questions to complete with a partner. Here the students demonstrate one of those activities.
Our neighborhood reports are finished! Getting twenty 2nd graders to write a three paragraph report was by no means a piece of cake, but with help from our reading tutors and Grandma we were able to conference with every single student and publish our reports by Friday! Most of the students even had time to draw a picture of their neighborhood to go along with their report. Overall, I was very proud of the whole class for their hard work.
Music class looks like a blast! Our second graders turned into a marching band!
