Back from Winter Break

Our first day and full week back to school was busy!

On the first day back we completed New Year's activities. After morning meeting, students completed a Friend Search.

New Year's fun continued into math with lots of place value activities. 

 Of course the class made a New Year's craft which included their resolutions.  Pictures of the finished project will be on the blog soon!

 In Writer's Workshop this past week we finished up revision minilessons.  This upcoming week will be filled with editing and publishing!

 In science, students sorted solid objects by attributes.

 In reader's workshop, we began our new nonfiction reading unit by learning how to identify fiction and nonfiction texts.

First, I read the book Verdi and students jotted down on a post-it note what makes this book fiction.

 They also completed a character response and central message sheet independently after the read aloud. 

 The next day I read another snake book, Slinky, Scaly Snakes.  This time students had to jot down what makes this book nonfiction.

During independent reading students had to read their choice book and stop and jot their thoughts.  Then they needed to include how this helped them understand the text better. 

 Another activity included cutting, pasting, and sorting book covers from a Scholastic Book Order. 

 During indoor recess many of the children love to use the base-ten blocks to build the tallest tower possibly.  

 Math included more activities to identify 2- and 3-dimensional shapes. 

 On Wednesday afternoon after the fire alarm went off Technology had to take place in our classroom. The class LOVED Miss Patente bringing laptops in for them to work on.  It was a special treat!

 During Word Study students retook the word study assessment they took in September.  This information allows me to see how much they have grown as a speller and what features they still need more lessons on.  Additionally, I assessed the class on the first 200 high frequency words (words they should be able to spell correctly in second grade).  Now students have a highlighted list in their binders of the words they spelled correctly and the words they still need to practice when completing word work activities.