October 25th Field Trip

We had a wonderful time enjoying the wonderful fall outdoors at the University of Michigan-Dearborn Interpretive Environmental Center.  When we arrived we gathered in the center to meet out student staff that would lead our groups that day.  We first had an extremely hands on adventure, discovering the aquatic animals at the Henry Ford Estates "Rose Garden".  It is no longer a rose garden and all of the Henry Ford land was donated to the college campus.  We gathered the aquatic animals by using nets to scoop anything we could.  We then examined what insect or bug it was.  Check out some great footage!  Ask you second grader investigater to tell what is going on in the pictures!

We had a wonderful time!  This we will remember for the rest of the year!

October 21st

I am sooooo sorry that I haven't posted anything in about two weeks!  My first masters class has come to and end.  I am glas those weeks are over.  Bad news I start another one next week!

Anyways, I have been sending home paper posts to help keep parents updated on what is going on in the classroom. 
Field trip:  Our Field trip is this Tuesday!  Please make sure that you bring a bag lunch and please dress for the weather...layer clothes! Wear shoes that can get a little dirty because we will be walking in the woods and we will be near a pond. 

We had our First Authors Celebration on Thursday!  It was a wonderful event where the studnets shared a piece of writing that they fixed up!  We enjoyed juice and talking about each others writing!

In our Making Meaning, We have been learning about different reading comprehension strategies.  The first reading strategy was Making Connections.  When we make connections we are thinking how the book relates to our own life.  Th esecond reading stratefy that we learned this week was visualizing.  Visualizing is when you create mental pictures in your mind from the words that your hear.  When we are doing these strategies they help us better understand the stories.  Here are some pictures of the students drawing what they visualized while I read the poem "My Baby Brother".

Math:  We have finished Unit 2 in math.  We took our math test Wednesday.  They are graded, but I would like to talk with the students about the test first.  I will send them home on Monday or Tuesday.  Unit 3 is about place value and using the base-ten blocks.

Our unit on insects will come to an end and the end of October.  I wanted to remind you that the homework for the imaginary insect is due next Friday October 28.

Have a wonderful weekend!

October 7, 2011

What a beautiful week!  We needed to have a week full of sun and warmth.

This week was full of learning. 

This was our first week of reading groups.  Each child goes to a different reading group.  They are small groups focusing on making words, reading strategies, writing strategies and much more.  We added the making words this year to help students with understanding letter sounds and the combination of letter sounds.  They are given 6-8 letters and they are guided in making different words with the letters they are given.  The second part is creating rhyming words to some of the words that were created with the letters.  Then, the students will transfer the words onto paper as an assessment that will help me evaluate if they understand the concepts of that day. 

We are now in our third week of our making meaning program.  This week we focused on making personal connections with the text.  We read the story Jamaica Tag-Along.  Many of the students had detailed stories related to what we were reading.

We are half way done with the second unit in math.  I introduced the triangle cards to day.  These are very similar to flashcards.  There will be some to cut out in this week’s homework.  We have been focusing on different strategies when adding and subtracting. One of the main math tools that we will be using is the number grid.  This is a great tool to help your child figure out different math problems from just regular adding to adding money.  I will be putting a number grid in the homework binders for an “at home” tool.

In science, we have been investigated insects and watching the couple adopted insects in our classroom.  In addition to the science program at our school, we decided to have a field trip to visit the Environmental Interpretive Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.  While we are there we will be finding insects in their natural habitat.  We will also be looking at aquatic insects in the natural ponds on the campus.

The field trip will be on October 25, 2011.  We will be leaving at 9:00 and we should be returning around 2:30-3:00.  In order to make this field trip, we will need parent volunteers to drive students from the school to U of M-Dearborn.  There is no cost to the field trip.  We will send home more details as the date becomes closer.

Enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend and I will see you on Monday morning!