Happy New Year! The best part of being back after the break is having eight enthusiastic students return to school ready to work after spending 17 days at home. I expected that I would have to review class expectations and routines, but it was unnecessary this year. We are off to a great start!
LITERACY
Writer's Workshop
Students will be participating in a Writer's Workshop lesson twice a week. Students either decide on their own topic or a general topic is provided. Students are expected to first draw a picture of what they will be writing about. We have been focusing on using lines, circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles when drawing our picture. Dependent on ability levels, students have to write between 1 to 3 sentences on their topic. They have been encouraged to use our core word poster and to write down the letters that they hear after saying the word slowly.
Printing Practice
We have begun Handwriting Without Tears this week. Students have been working consistently using a tripod grasp. Pencil grips have also been introduced. Some of the students are being provided with the opportunity to utilize various types of pencil grip to determine which one will be most appropriate. The students have been persevering through these lessons as with the focus being on forming letters appropriately and in the space provided, students are required to erase and try again ... a lot.
Core Words
The core word that we have been focusing on this week is the word "make".
I am hopeful that with daily review, each student in our class will be able to read each core word that we have reviewed this year. Students are also encouraged to practice reading the core words with a partner when they have completed their learning activities.
Core words that we have learned: want, that, help, it, what, go, I, like, more, you, in, make.
Sight Words
We have also been learning to read the following sight words: friend, mom, dad, the, play. These are words that we could use while we are writing during our Writer's Workshop lessons.
Morning Work
Tuesday morning is our literacy morning. Our morning assignments are individualized and students are working on beginning and ending sounds, reading/writing consonant, vowel, consonant words, unscrambling words to create sentences and also activities focusing on reading comprehension skills. There were three very excited boys on Tuesday who were very excited to be able to complete an assignment in a duotang.
Mathematics
During every math class we:
1. Practice counting to 100.
2. Number recognition fluency. Reading numbers quickly.
2. Practice counting by 10s.
3. Participate in missing number activities. For example, 18 ___ 20
4. We are all learning to sign numbers up to 20.
Subitizing skills are focused during one math class each week. Today after participating in a large group subitizing lesson, the students took turns leading their small group in subitizing fingers on one hand.
We are also continuing to work on adding numbers with sums up to 10. We are presently working on activities focusing on addition facts with the sums up to 5.
Physical Education
On Monday, we have begun joining the two, second-grade classes for physical education class as a whole class at the end of the school day. We will be participating in gymnastics for the remainder of the month. Please take a look at Mrs. Millar's blog for some more information about what the students are doing during their physical education classes.
https://millerphysed.blogspot.com/p/learning.html
