Part of being a good reader is noticing what choices an author made in writing a text. In Grade 2, we learn how to explain why particular oral, print, or other media texts are our personal favourites. This past week in 2B, we chose a book that we enjoyed from the classroom and wrote a book review (or trailer). The students did an excellent job of finding the strong points in their books of choice, and presenting their thoughts in the book reviews below. 2B styled their book trailers in the format of Reading Rainbow's book reviews that we have watched. All the reviews are organized into the students' colour groups so that they can easily find their own video. We hope you enjoy our book trailers!
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In this Valentine’s week, the students have been working hard on some friendly letters to give to someone of their choosing. We learned about where to put the date, commas, and salutations in our letters, and peer edited to make sure that the writing made sense and used conventions correctly. Jack even tried to write some Valentines this week. You can see the students’ writing below!
Photo by Epic Photography http://www.concretetheatre.ca/galleries/EarlyBloomer0910/index.htm We were privileged to have Concrete Theatre visit Millgrove this past Tuesday and perform the play "Early Bloomer." There were plenty of fun puppets, interesting characters, and catchy songs. You can read our play reviews below!
Each Friday, beginning this week, the students will be writing to their parents in their Spelling Test/TWAS book telling you about what we have been learning and working on that particular week. Please respond to your child by writing back and return it to school on or before Thursday each week by writing about school, home, or anything else that is of interest to your child. TWAS. writing provides a purpose for writing, keeps you updated on what they are learning, and provides another writing experience for your child. Thank you for helping to engage your child in their learning!
2B had been working hard the past couple of weeks of school on Christmas stories for their families. We focused on crafting interesting plots and making our ideas clear to our audience (who were the students’ families). They made the wrapping paper and everything, and were very proud of their creations!
To keep up their great growth in reading and writing, the students in 2B each have a reading and writing goal that they are working on throughout the week. In reading, they are working on a “Café” strategies in one of the categories of comprehension, accuracy (in reading words), fluency, and expanding vocabulary. In writing, they are each working on a specific element of the six traits of writing: voice, organization, ideas, conventions, word choice, and sentence fluency. The students have been very thoughtful in paying attention to these goals in their reading and writing, and it’s neat to see their growth from week to week in these goals. We will continue to add a greater variety of strategies to our reading and writing boards as the year goes on!
We’ve been reading and writing poetry this month in Language Arts, and wrote a variety of different types of poetry this past week. The students worked hard to make interesting word choices and tried to paint pictures in their readers’ minds. They are very proud to have them up in the hallway for the audience of Millgrove students and staff!
We’ve been keeping busy with reading and writing in Language Arts this past week, and the students have mastered doing Read to Someone during Daily 5. This week, we have a few new computers in our classroom, so we will start using those for Listen to Reading. In addition to our journal writing this week, we read some non-fiction books about turkeys and wrote plans to care for a prospective turkey pet. There were some very entertaining ideas for how to pass the time with one’s pet turkey!
2B has already started our Daily 5 and CAFE adventure! This is the reading and writing program implemented in our classroom.
Daily 5 is the structure we will use to plan our morning. Children will be busy completing meaningful literacy tasks. The choices will be:
Right now, we are focusing on increasing our stamina to work independently during Read to Self. Within the next few weeks, the other choices will be introduced. While the students are completing their literacy tasks, I will be meeting with small groups and conferencing with individual students. Daily 5 is how we schedule the reading portion of our Language Arts time. CAFE is what we study during this time. CAFE is an acronym for the four major components of reading. They are:
The students will learn reading strategies within each category. These strategies will become tools for the children to use to help themselves become better readers and writers. You can ask your child what strategies we have been focusing on from week to week, and I will periodically send home information about strategies we are learning about in our weekly email newsletter. (Don't worry if you haven't yet received an email--we are finalizing the lists of email addresses that we already have permissions for.) You can see that the students are off to a great start with their reading stamina, and have set very ambitious goals about how long we will be able to stay focused on our reading as a class. I believe that 10 million hours was a recent suggestion, and if any class could achieve that goal, I am certain it would be 2B! |
Mrs. BarkerMrs. Barker is a grade three and literacy teacher at Millgrove School. She loves science and reading, and lives in a little brick house with Mr. Barker and her kids Jack and Ellie. Archive
June 2024
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