Thursday, November 12, 2015

WEEKLY NEWS


                     
2nd-3rd Grade Explorer News Nov. 13, 2015


Thank you to all the parents who came for conferences the last 2 weeks! It is a great time to connect with families and answer questions you may have. Don’t hesitate to call or reach out if you have any questions or concerns at any time. Our next reporting period is January when the report cards are sent home.

New Recess
    We are piloting these new opportunities in the week for our learners to get outside and get some exercise. It worked out great the first week. I think everyone enjoyed the extra fresh air. As things are added of course, other things will have to let go. Morning meetings will take a hit. Our buddy time with Mrs. Boucher’s class will also have to be changed to Monday mornings.It will also impact our Reader’s Workshop time, especially as the taking off of snowclothes will eventually be a reality.

100 Mile Club:
     There are a few determined runners in our class. They are eating up the miles! We continue to run and walk the track. We are recording laps along the way. Next week, our second graders will be leading a kickoff for the 100 mile club in our Whole School Morning Meeting. Don’t forget to send back forms!!!
WORD STUDY
Words of the Day: consensus, courage, reliable

We are going to pull back to new spelling lists every other week. For some students, one week is enough, but many others benefit from spending more time with these word patterns. There will also be several in school activities and breaks that will impact our routines over the next few months. Our quizzes will work around this. Students who learn these words quickly can have extra time to read and work on other activities throughout the second week.


WRITING:
2nd Grade-
Read Aloud: The Outlandish Adventures of Liberty Aimes


We have selected one draft to take through the revising process. We will be polishing this up and typing it on our laptops next week and before Thanksgiving. This will be the end of our narrative writing unit.

3rd Graders: We are wrapping up the cursive alphabet. We will be practicing these letters. Read aloud time is a good time to work on packets of letter review. Our read aloud is The Sisters Grimm. It’s a bit creepy. We’re making a lot of inferences. But  
we are just at the beginning. We’re just not sure the direction the story is going. We have our suspicions.

Third graders are also revising their drafts of small moment stories. They have another week to work on drafts and can plan on some nitty gritty editing ahead. The plan is to have them type their stories too. Hopefully we wrap this up by Thanksgiving.



READERS WORKSHOP:
We have TWO whole class reading projects going on in class this week.

Lewis and Clark Expedition
Your Life As A Private on the Lewis and Clark Expedition was the title of our whole class close read. What was it like to sign up for this adventure? What were you expected to do? What was it really like? What native people would you meet? Were they kind? Would they trade with you? These are a few of the  themes this book explores. The first day, Mrs. Turcotte read it aloud to the whole class. The kids jotted down some things that stuck out for them after this first read. On Thursday, some students partner read the text for their 2nd read, and Mrs. Turcotte read it again to a small group. The class all jotted down more things they noticed this second read. Next week, we’ll explore a little more about the timeline of this event and it will lead up to a discussion of opinion and collecting evidence from text to back up opinions.




The Great White Shark
Our current event/ science based read was on the great white shark in our current National Geographic. Students worked in partnerships to infer the meaning of new words in the article, practice finding the main idea, drawing diagrams, and making connections from what they learned in the text.




Shades of Meaning (see the blog post before)
A new activity we’ve been trying out is a vocabulary station called Shades of Meaning. Students met with me in small groups throughout the week to discuss, debate, and try to find consensus on an order of vocabulary words based on their meanings. This week we had to arrange them from most honest to least honest ( Our Words: trustworthy, dependable, responsible, loyal, honest, unreliable, sketchy, shady) Everyone took turns sharing their thinking, rearranging words, justifying why they moved words in different places, listening to others, some changed their thinking, and worked to reach a consensus among all. Every group had a little different order and justifications for their thinking. There is a lot of power in this type of activity. The social skill building was huge. I think every CARES value was put to the test and exercised in this group activity.


CONTINENTS:
We had a musical adventure around the world to all 7 continents through the WeeBeeTunes Travel Adventure video series. Through song, it’s a cartoon series that takes you on a pretty deep historical/ geographical/ cultural tour of a few countries on each continent. We learned about English royalty, famous french landmarks, King Khufu’s pyramids, the REAL Timbuktu, the sherpas of Nepal and Mt. Everest, the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, a float down the Amazon River, Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro, Ecuador, the great barrier reef, rugby and the cultural history of New Zealand, the race to the south pole, the Calgary Rodeo, and ends with a song packed with the history of Chicago, city of the “Blues.”




Notes and Reminders

Nov. 18      Last Day for Stuff a Truck Food Collection (our class has very little)
Nov. 20      100 Mile Club Card return date (Tshirts)
Nov. 25-27  Thanksgiving Break
Dec. 10       Holiday Bazaar

Shades of Meaning

2nd and 3rd graders are learning to discuss, debate, and order a list of some fantastic vocabulary words.  In small groups, kids take turns sharing the meaning of a word and placing it where they think it belongs on the "spectrum" of meaning. They have to justify their placement and agree to listen to others ideas.  At that point, they might change their thinking or not. Everyone gets heard and we agree to disagree. The goal is to find consensus among the group. There are lots of opportunities for social skill development and putting our CARES into practice. Not to mention we're building vocabulary too!