Here's a sneak peak into our learning over the last few days...
Making Applesauce
We learned how to follow a recipe as we peeled, cored, and added ingredients to our crockpot to make applesauce on Tuesday. The classroom had the sweet aroma of fall as the applesauce was slowly cooking. We enjoyed the applesauce on Wednesday during snack time. Good thing we had enough for seconds because so many loved the homemade applesauce! Thank you Mrs. Girard for coming in to help peel and core the apples with our Starfish!
Johnny Appleseed Day
On Wednesday, the second graders really enjoyed their first opportunity to rotate between all the second grade classrooms. Each classroom had different activities planned so there was something for everyone to enjoy! Some of the stations included a Johnny Appleseed Growth Mindset activity, Life cycle of an apple, a STEM challenge with apples, math activities involving graphing, measuring, and counting apples, and a directed drawing of Johnny Appleseed. The kids really enjoyed the opportunity to learn from the whole second grade team!
We look forward to providing many opportunities to share kids for theme days and science explorations. We are already planning a Fall Harvest Rotation day for October!
Reader's Workshop: Learning decoding strategies to solve tricky words
In our recent mini lessons, the starfish and learning new strategies for word solving quickly and independently. We have been taking close look at prefixes, suffixes, vowel teams to help with our reading work.
How can you help your child with their reading at home?
1. If your child misreads a word, you can repeat back to them what they read and ask, "Does that make sense" "Look again and try it a different way"
2. If your child comes to a word they don't know, encourage them by saying "Do you see parts of the word you know?"
3. Encourage your child to skip the tricky word and read on to try to figure out what would make sense. I also coach the kids to put the beginning sound in their mouth of the tricky word and often they are able to figure out the word based on what would make sense in the context of the sentence.
4. If your child reads the word incorrectly, encourage your child to try a different vowel sound (short vowel vs. long vowel)
5. If your child is reading the beginning of the word but failing to read through the whole word (forgetting the ending), you can prompt, "Don't forget to look at all parts of the word"
Three Questions to Always Prompt:
1. Does that sound right?
2. Does that look right?
3. Does that make sense?
Math Workshop
This week you received your child's math menu with student work attached. Do you wonder how this is weaved into our math workshop each day?
We have math right after morning meeting each day. We follow the workshop model (similar to reader's workshop and writer's workshop) We begin together with a warm up typically involving mental math, a math talk, or skip counting practice. Following the 5 minute warm up, this is where I teach a 10-12 minute mini lesson that directly correlates to our math focus for the day.
Following the mini lesson, the kids break off working independently following their math menu. The math menu involves a daily have to and choices. This allows me and the other teachers in our classroom to pull small groups to meet your child personalized math learning. We are only 6 days into implementing the menu. With limited amounts of practice, I am in shock with how well the kids have been able to manage their time and make decisions to carry out their best learning. The kids have been looking forward to Math Menu time because it allows them to work at their own pace, get personalized instruction, and allows them to be in the drivers seat making choices for their learning.
As we continue learning and implementing the routines of math menu, there will be an everyday component of fact practice, games, word problem solving, and technology. Do you have interest in volunteering? I will be inviting parents to run small groups during our math menu time starting Mid-October. I will have a Sign-Up Genius coming to you soon.
The last component of math workshop after math menu is the wrap-up. This may be the most important piece to the whole math block. This is where we come together to share our learning, celebrate our personal success, and reteach any math concepts as needed.
Interviewing our 4th Grade Buddies
This morning we interviewed our buddies to learn more about them. They found through questions if their buddies had siblings, favorite animals, foods, and more!
Apple Science:
The Starfish worked to solve the mystery why are some apples green and some apples are red? Why are certain apples sweeter than others? In the science lesson, it touched on the heredity of the apple seeds. We made connections to apples by comparing how we are similar and different to our brothers and sisters.
We followed along this afternoon completing a mystery science experiment. We took a close look at Gala, Macintosh, Granny Smith, and Pink Lady apples. We were able to taste test to determine the sweet and sour flavors.
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