Welcome back to school and Happy New Year! It is great to back again. The kids appeared ready to come back and see each other again. We had a great week together and they had many wonderful stories to share about their holiday vacation activities.
This week, team Harmony started a new science unit. We finished our study of the Solar System before our holiday break. This week, we began our study of the oceans. Once again, the students will participate in a series of workshops, rotating between the classrooms on our team. I am teaching the layers of the ocean, Ms. Benoit is providing workshops on animal adaptations and Ms. Crowley is teaching our students about the ocean food webs. When our science rotations have concluded, the students will get ready to write their ocean animal reports, our next writing unit. In this unit, the students will learn how to write a piece containing non-fiction writing elements. Up until this point, we have primarily written personal narratives, or small moments as we call them in first and second grade. These are stories about things that has already happened to us. If you recall, the students learn many different writing techniques for making these stories more interesting to the reader, such as using adjectives, dialogue, setting and effective transition words. In our non-fiction writing unit, the students will shift focus and write informational pieces. If you are a second grade parent, you will notice that we will, once again, begin this unit by writing "All About" pieces. "All about" writing allows the students to slowly transition into non-fiction writing as we focus upon things that the children already know a lot about. For example, a student who knows a lot about dogs might wish to write about dogs. This piece would perhaps contain chapters on how to care for a dog, what food they eat, equipment you need for a dog, and games dogs like. A student who does not know a lot about dogs would not write about this, of course, but would choose a topic that pertains to his/her interests and expertise. During this transition writing phase, students do not conduct research. They only write about things they already know. This allows us to focus upon structure and other non-fiction writing elements. When the students have finished their all about writing pieces, we will begin our research-based ocean animal writing unit. This is always a favorite writing unit for our young learners. I hope your child will share all about "All About" writing at home:)
Report cards come home with our students on January 23rd. Our report cards have been changed from previous years to reflect our curricular emphasis on the common core standards. The Bell has published numerous articles on these new report cards to help parents navigate the new reporting format. They can be accessed by clicking on the School Bell on our web-site if you missed them. Thank you. If you have any questions after you receive your child's report card, please contact me.
Lastly, I wanted to share some pictures from our week in school before our holiday break. I never had a chance to post them on the last day of school, and most of vacation I was without internet and phone at my house (Yes, I am one of the lucky FairPoint customers!). It is finally back so here we go. I think you will enjoy these pictures. Thank you all for providing goodies for our holiday party in the classroom and thank you parents who volunteered your time to help us out. We are lucky to have such a great community.
Before break, we participated in a world-wide technology celebration called "Hour of Code," an opportunity to teach students about coding of computers and expanding their understanding, and hopefully, their interest in computing. We went to our computer lab and learned how to program in order to move a character around a maze. Ms. Davison's reading buddies joined us for part of this and we learned so much. In fact, the kids loved it so much, I linked it on our wiki, under the technology tab. If your child enjoys logic and puzzles, there is also a great app for the ipad called "Daisy the Dinosaur."
Before vacation, my daughter Emilie, who is 15, was able to join us for a day. She helped us with various holiday crafts and we all had lunch in the classroom together.
Maria
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