2H Class Blog!: Jan. 24th News

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Mrs. Healey’s Classroom News (1/24/16)

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What We've Been Up To:
Reading: This month, we continue to "amp up" our reading power! This week we learned that one of the most powerful reading tools we have is.....OUR PARTNER! Students had the opportunity to choose the same book as their partner to practice using this great "tool".

We learned that "Same Book Partnerships"...
1. Make plans for stopping and checking in after reading a section.

2. Don't just ignore the confusing parts...they ask questions and reread to figure things out!

We'll continue using our partner as a reading tool next week when we work on keeping track of longer books. As your second graders continue to grow as readers, the length of their books will too!

Writing: To launch our creative writing unit, we began by reading a fictional favorite: The Day the Crayons Came Back. Following 2R's lead, we decided we'd like to write another crayon tale: The Day the Crayons Came Back to School!

Using Drew Daywalt's book as our mentor text.

Where could our crayons be writing from?

Taking on a crayon character, each Owl student wrote a postcard with voice and detail to create a page for our class book. While our final drafts were sent off to the Pitcher Publishing Press, take a sneak peak of our work in progress!

We'll enjoy reading our published class book this week!

Word Study: On Thursday, SMS tech coordinator, Mrs. Sargent, joined us for word study to launch an exciting new spelling opportunity! Spelling City provides additional ways for students to practice their words. Each account is linked specifically to your child's word sort. After our trial in class, we quickly realized, students really needed their word list in front of them in order to complete many of the activities. Words will be sent home on Monday, so I apologize if your child experienced difficulty trying to use the program at home without having their words available! Starting the following week, I will send words home on the first Monday of our two-week cycle, so students have them available for the full two weeks. Let me know if you have any questions or need login information to be sent home again!

Novel Engineering: This week, revisiting our engineering roots, we tried out a new idea shared to us by Mr. Goldsmith! Novel Engineering is an integrated approach to teaching literacy and engineering. Starting with a winter favorite, The Snowy Day, we listened to the story thinking about what problems our client, Peter (the main character!), encountered, and how an engineer might be able to solve them.

Then it was off to design! Choosing a problem, each Owl sketched out a solution to one of Peter's problems. We saw everything from "Kitty Claw Feet" to keep him from falling through the snow, a "Snow Blaster" to help launch snowballs at the big kids, a "Freezer Pocket" to insulate a snowball, and a "Snow Catching Hat" to prevent snow from falling on his head. Genius!