10/20/2017 0 Comments Mayer Memo 10-20-17 Living History Fair made wonderful memories! The children were thrilled at the success of their Living History Fair. We spent lots of time practicing for the event. The students truly enjoyed this great activity that tied together our Culture and History themes. So many parents, teachers, and other students commented on how poised the children were and how well they told their stories. THANKS for your support with this great project. Photos from the big day will be added to our photo gallery very soon. Here's what the kids had to say about their experience: Frida I was standing so long my back hurt. Wolfie Every adult knew what my project was about. Liam B. Lots of people said their grandpa had a bronze star like my grandpa did. Marty Some kids went to the same school that used the bricks my grandpa made. Jamie Some people just looked and talked about my board so I didn't get to present. Maeve I got real thirsty from talking so much. Ava I was surprised I got questions I didn't know the answers to. Tommy My neck got sore from standing so long. Stella I learned Orion's great grandma also canned and they used wax to close the jars. Liam K. I learned more facts about my cottage, like they had boats that gave people rides. Peter My throat hurt from all that talking. Dylan People said they'd been to the restaurant that was the old fire house from my project. Sylvia I learned I need to talk a little slower. Kennedi I learned Jamie's mom and my grandma both came from Tennessee. Orion My feet and back hurt from standing. Naveen One person said they had a friend from India like my grandpa. Lillian Someone asked how old my stained glass was and I said 60-70 years. Jahanna I liked how lots of people came to see my project. Steven People said, "Wow! Awesome!" because they liked my artifact. Math Last week, the students finished Unit One of Investigations, our new math program. They took the end-of-unit test which you have seen, signed, and returned. Many children have discovered the importance of showing their work when they solve math equations and story problems through this assessment. If your child struggled on any aspect of the first unit's test, please note that a wonderful feature of the Investigation Mathematics program is that concepts are continually revisited throughout the year with extensions and other applications. Plus, we review key concepts daily through our ten minute math review. That said, on days when math homework is not assigned, please help your child practice his/her addition and subtraction facts to 20. This is a standard your child should master by the end of second grade. Our second unit in Investigations focuses on attributes of shapes and parts of a whole. The focus of this unit is on observing and describing attributes of 2D and 3D shapes (ie. number and shape of faces, number and length of sides, number of angles and vertices) and using those attributes as they sort, construct, draw, and compare shapes.This unit also develops ideas about equal parts of a whole, focusing specifically on partitioning and describing halves, fourths, and thirds of one whole and recognizing that the same equal parts of a whole can be different shapes (ie. one half of a square). Students have sorted 2D and 3D shapes, recognized that 3D shapes have faces that are made of 2D shapes. Children have drawn 3D geo blocks and played games such as Find the Block, Mystery Shape, and Trace the Shape and practiced using the language of 2D and 3D geometry. Ask your child to tell you about what s/he's learned! Writing Workshop Last week, we talked about how to create a title for their stories, and the children discovered the best titles are usually short and hint at what the book is about to encourage their audience to read it. The children fixed and fancied their final personal narrative, and we had an author's celebration this week! Finally, I gave a narrative writing assessment and discovered how they are a truly blossoming as writers! I hope you had a chance to read your child's work when you visited today for the Living History Fair! Global Read Aloud & Reading Workshop We continued our GRA author study of Mem Fox books. We read Possum Magic last week, and the children wrote their thinking about characters or story elements in their Reader's notebooks. They shared their work with Mrs. Holstine's second grade class from Germantown, Maryland, and they were thrilled to receive comments about last week's work from Mrs. Holstine's students. This week, we read Whoever You Are, and did a similar activity with our buddies from Maryland. We finished our chapter book by Lois Lowry, Gooney Bird Greene, and the children identified the story elements and author's message in this book. The students thought Ms. Lowry wrote the book to teach children how to write good stories (AKA small moments!), because the main character, Gooney Bird Greene told lots of stories about experiences in her life and suggested ways to make them interesting along the way. I hope you saw their work in the hall that showed their pictures of Gooney Bird and what they learned about stories from her. During reading workshop, the students have been reading folktales and finding story elements and lesson with supporting details. I have also conferred with each child as they read books of their choice and discussed reading goals with each of them. Ask your child to tell you about this! Word work Last week, the children compared words that end with a final /k/ sound, and this week they compared words with long and short /e/ vowel sounds. They discovered that when a word with short vowels and a final k sound are spelled with a ck rather than a k. They noticed that short e words are spelled CVC such as sled, and some short e words have the CVVC spelling pattern such as bread. We also talked about how long e words are spelled CVVC with ee such as sweet, or ea such as team. Many children have trouble remembering these spelling patterns, so they will need to practice this a great amount! Fall Conferences & Assessments I can hardly believe conferences are only two weeks away! I have conducted many assessments to prepare for your child’s conference. Most of you have already made an appointment for a conference. If you haven’t, please make an appointment for a conference by following the directions provided by the district. Please plan to arrive 10 minutes before your scheduled conference time so that you may review your child’s file before the meeting. This and That • As the weather gets cooler, please make sure your child has warm clothes to wear for recess. • Please look through and clean out your child’s take-home folder every evening. This way you will know what your child has done each day in school. THANK YOU!
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10/6/2017 0 Comments Mayer Memo 10-6-17Reading & Global Read Aloud! Our class is very excited to be participating in the Annual Global Read Aloud! The Global Read Aloud (GRA) is part of Connected Educators Month. Participating GRA teachers read the same books aloud to their classes during the month of October. Then, we connect with other kids and teachers around the world and share information and ideas about the books. We are participating in an author study of Mem Fox books. Fox has written and illustrated over 40 children's books. We will read one of her books each week of October, and this week we read her book called Koala Lou. This is a cute story about a koala who competes in the Bush Olympics in an attempt to gain his mother's affection. The children wrote and drew about the character Koala Lou and recorded their thinking using Seesaw. We "met" friends from Mrs. Holstine's 2nd grade class in Germantown, Maryland who did the same thing, and next week, we will enjoy looking at and commenting on one another's blogs. I will also tweet about the children's experiences using our classroom Twitter site, @2MayerLincoln. If you have a Twitter account, please follow us on Twitter to share our adventures! The children also wrote and drew about the main character in our read aloud, Gooney Bird Greene, by Lois Lowry. They posted this work to Seesaw. I hope you have had a chance to join your child's Seesaw account by scanning the QR code I sent home earlier this week. The children are also inferring the meaning of words while we read Gooney Bird Greene. They discovered that inferring involves using existing knowledge - called schema - combining this with the text to achieve new ideas. When we come to a word we can read but don't understand we stop, say what we think the word means, then look it up in the online dictionary to confirm its meaning. We will need lots more work with this strategy! Finally, we also began reading folktales. The children learned that folktales were first told orally, passed down through generations, and were told to teach children lessons. The children will be finding story elements AND the lessons in these tales in coming weeks. Math We finished our third investigation which focused on concepts related to counting coins and objects. The students practiced basic subtraction facts, counted objects by 2s, 5s, and 10s, and played a game called Collect 50¢ which involved changing pennies for nickels, nickels for dimes, etc. They also solved problems to determine whether we had enough cubes for the class. Next, we began our fourth and last investigation in this first unit of our math program. This work focuses on routines for solving story problems and expectations for conducting math talks. Ask your child to tell you about these things. Writing Workshop The children continue to work on small moment, narrative stories. They learned to try a published author's craft move several ways before deciding whether their version of the move works in their writing. They chose a piece to publish and have begun to fix up and fancy up their work. We hope to have an author's celebration next week. Social Studies - Living History Fair and Naper Settlement Field Trip We'll be heading off to Naper Settlement on Thursday, October 26 for a full day adventure to learn about local history and how this area of Illinois was settled. Look for a permission slip for this trip to come home soon. The trip is paid for by our wonderful Lincoln PTO! I need one chaperone for this trip. If you are interested in doing this please send me an email. We continued learning about culture by watching a Reading Rainbow video of Mrs. Katz and Tush. This is story by Patricia Polacco that tells about Jewish culture and traditions. We also read a big book about "Where We Came From" and had a very rich discussion about this topic! In honor of Columbus Day, we read Encounter by Jane Yolen which tells of Christopher Columbus coming to the new world from the native American's point of view. The students took the Culture assessment. Reminder: Living History Fair project information went home on Wednesday! Projects are due Monday, October 16. Also, don't forget to send $4 for the poster board! Word work and high-frequency word wall words The children worked on word sorts at their level to discern between words with short and long i spelling patterns. While every child worked on letter i words, there were different groups working with different spelling patterns. The patterns we discussed include: CVC makes the short i vowel sound and CVCe makes a long vowel sound as well in words like bike and mine. The pattern igh is VCC and also makes a long vowel sound as in sigh and bright, as does the pattern CV when the vowel is y as in why and try. Although we discussed all of these spelling patterns as a class, children are only responsible to know the spelling patterns on their word list. Please ask your child to tell you his/her spelling patterns each week and have him/her explain them to you! Please be sure to have your child practice their words at home using the fun STAR sheet in your child's take-home folder. I’ve already noticed how the students are growing in their ability to recognize spelling patterns and the sound rules they follow. This skill will enable the children to decode and spell larger, multi-syllabic words they will encounter throughout their life. We have also been practicing high-frequency word wall words. These words do not always follow spelling patterns, and therefore, we just “gotta know” these words through memorization. Halloween This year, we will celebrate Halloween on Tuesday, October 31, with a full day of school. You will receive complete details about the plans in an upcoming Lincoln Log. Students should wear NOT their costumes to school. They will change into their costumes during recess time. This is how the day will look for 2nd grade students: 9:00 K-2 Storyteller 11:25: Dismissal for lunch and costume change (form to come if you wish your child to come home to change) 12:30 Halloween parade Afternoon - Halloween party (time to be determined) Notes from the Library: In Library this week, your child learned about the Monarch Award Book Challenge. This is an award that is given out by Illinois students voting for their favorite book out of 20 books chosen by school librarians. Your child will bring home a reading log that can be used to keep track of the books they read. Once they read five books (I will make this happen in the library), they can vote. If they read all 20 books, they will be invited to a lunch party in March. All 20 books must be read by March 1st. Students are able to check out books from Lincoln, as well as their public library. Please note since this is an Illinois program, you may need to put the books on hold. This is an optional program that allows students to read books that they may not normally pick up. There are fiction, non-fiction and short chapter books included. If you have any questions, please contact Mrs. Brauweiler directly. |
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Mystery State!Mystery state for June 1 Did You Know...New evidence links handwriting and educational success.
Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. "When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated,” said Stanislas Dehaene, a psychologist at the Collège de France in Paris. “There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain. And it seems that this circuit is contributing in unique ways we didn’t realize,” he continued. “Learning is made easier.” Parent's attitudes about mathematics affect their kids!
"A 2015 study showed math-anxious parents who frequently helped their elementary schoolers with homework saw their kids learn significantly less math by the end of the year than kids whose parents didn't express an aversion to math." (Heidi Stevens, Balancing Act and Chicago Tribune) According to Jennifer McCray, Principal investigator at the Erikson Institute's Early Math Collaborative, "Statements from parents are extremely powerful in terms of helping a child decide, 'Who am I going to be relative to math" How should I feel about math?'" If you're a math-averse parent, the article linked above has great tips for addressing this! Archives
June 2018
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