We sure have had an interesting couple of weeks lately! The weather has been very January-esque, with some snow, some ice, and even some sun!
I very much enjoyed meeting with the parents of my students over the last couple of weeks for our annual Mid-Year Meets. I was very proud to present your child's work and showcase the progress that each student has made since school began in September. Growth and progress continue! Second grade is an amazing time when learning and skills grow like Jack's beanstalk!
In our Word Work we have continued with parts of speech, lately looking at adverbs. This class is getting a very good grasp of how to make sentences really burst with meaning and detail. The two categories that we have studied for adverbs tell how and how often the action, or verb, happens. The class has been writing very creative sentences and we go over them together, underlining and circling the parts of speech that we have been studying. The work is colorful and playful, and usually involves lots of laughter. We have also made some nice posters to decorate our walls to remind us of these useful and powerful words when we do our Writers workshops, as well.
During our Math lessons we have been learning and using different units of measurement. The class has used meters and centimeters. Also inches, feet, and yards. We have also delved into measuring weight with kilograms and grams. Our next unit of measurement will be ounces and pounds. We will also measure volume with cups, pints, quarts, and gallons. Of course, these units involve a lot of hands-on experiments and tool usage. We have been using estimation and comparison, making charts, and solving word problems related to these units of measure.
During our Readers Workshop the focus has continued to be on solving tricky word strategies. We specifically have been focusing on "What does the word mean", and "Does that sound right?". We have particularly had a focus on vocabulary words pulled from class read aloud, Runaway Ralph . The vocabulary words were strong and tricky words that made the story really come alive. One example was the word seizing.
We also had a joke telling class that focused on the two strategies mentioned. The jokes mostly had a punch line that relied on a play on words. The class practiced reading them, figuring out what they meant, and then we had a lot of hilarity pretending to be stand up comedians.
In Writers Workshop, we spent some time comparing fiction and non fiction writing. Last week, the class began the fiction writing unit by developing characters for new stories. This week we began developing the settings for our stories, using our word work to build details and use strong descriptive words.