March/April!

Hello 2C Families!
It's middle of March and moving into April and I'm wondering where the time has gone!  We have been so busy exploring all types of things...like Fiction Writing, Sustainable Environments, Geometry and now Fractions, and so much more!  Now we are moving in to the second half of the second semester and we have lots of things coming up!  Such as Student Led Conferences!  We will be working hard in the next few weeks getting all of the learning organized into our Portfolios to present to the parents!  Also...2C is MOVING!  Scheduled date is April 17th and 18th, so be ready to have your conferences in our new room!  This will be located on the 2nd floor straight down the hall from the rotunda!

Our learning now:

Reading

Still working in guided reading groups and participating in Daily 5 activities!  Don't hesitate to come in and either lead a group or participate in an activity.  Also remember that RAZ-kids is a great resource for your child to read books just right for them at home!  We will eventually start doing individual conferencing for each student and possibly some DRA (Diagnostic Reading Assessment) testing with a select few students. 

Writing

In writing we are just now finishing up some amazing fiction stories!  We are either done publishing or still working on publishing.  We are just now getting started with Persuasive Letter Writing!  We will be persuading AISD, specifically Mr. Boerner, to make some more sustainable choices for our school!

Unit

We will still be focusing on what we've learned from our Sustainable Environments unit as we write our persuasive letters while also thinking about how our food choices affect the environment in our From Field to Table unit.  This won't be our main focus, but we will hopefully be making these connections in class.  However, we will be focusing on where our food comes from, how it is grown and processed, as well as the people and technology are involved in making our food.  Please engage your child in where the food they eat comes from, not "My kitchen"!

Math

We are all done with learning about shapes, direction, grid coordinates, and so much more in our geometry unit!  Now Fractions!  We will be exploring the world of fractions for the next few weeks, common fractions with numerators of one and denominators up to 12, equivalent fractions, and recognizing fractions in the world around them!  Again this a great topic to discuss at home to support your child's learning!

Environmental Websites

Environmental Websites

Check out one, two or ALL of the environmental links below!  See how much you can learn about helping our environment! 

EekoWorld – A new PBS website teaches kids ages 6 to 9 how they can help take care of the earth. Animated characters use games and activities to present facts about ecosystems and pollution. Children can build their own “EekoCreature” and help it overcome environmental problems.
Nature Challenge for Kids – This David Suzuki Foundation website starts out with ten simple ways you can protect nature, followed by four challenge activities that offer first-hand experience with the natural world. The “Cool Links” page connects with other environmental websites.

Kids Planet – Species fact sheets, “wild games”, web of life, how kids can help defend the environment, even a Wildlife Adoption Center.
Eco-Kids – EcoKids is Earth Day Canada’s environmental education program for youth who care about the planet. It offers interactive, fun, educational games and activities that utilize participants’ willingness to learn. Children are encouraged to form their own opinions, make decisions, get involved and understand the impact their own actions have on the environment.
Kids Regen – A place for children to interact with other kids, play, and have fun while learning the important connections between healthy soil/environment, healthy food, and healthy people. Kidsregen.org is part of The Rodale Institute’s Youth Educational Program.
The Green Squad – This NRDC website shows how to identify and solve environmental problems. Explore a colorful virtual school room by room, and use the mouse to locate potential hazards. Site offers a wide range of fact sheets and environmental resources.
The Big Blue Bus – A fun way for kids to learn about protecting the world’s water sources. Kids ages 8 to 16 can sign up as Water Wizards, with a Small Fry Club for kids under 7. Cartoon characters introduce games and activities while teaching about “all things watery.” This site is put out by the Government of Canada.

Global Warming Kids Site – This EPA site explains what global warming is and what causes it, and what you can do to help stop it. Educational but not overwhelming, the site provides definitions of each scientific term used and features simple global warming-themed games.
Kids Go Wild – Wild news, wild animal facts, environmental games. KidsGoWild.com also gives kids the chance to get involved in conservation by joining Conservation Kids, where you learn about saving wild animals and the environment! Sponsored by The Wildlife Conservation Society, headquartered at the world famous Bronx Zoo.
I Buy Different – Empowers child
ren and teens with the message: “You have the power to make the earth a better place becuase of what you buy.” This site offers a variety of tools and materials to help young people learn about the connections and actions that can make a difference.
Roofus’ Solar Home – At this site, meet a dog named Roofus who’s an expert on solar energy and energy efficiency. As you visit different parts of Roofus’ energy smart house, you’ll find energy saving tips and simple experiments to help you understand how energy works.
Recycle City – Click on any section of Recycle City that you want to tour, or click on the Dumptown Game. You can create your own Recycle City scavenger hunt or go to the Activities area and see other ways you can explore Recycle City. A great way for kids to learn the basics of recycling.

Planet Slayer – “Greena, the Worrier Princess” is an animated Australian teenager with a sense of purpose — to save the earth. Visitors will have fun watching cartoons about her environmental adventures and playing the Planet Slayer game.
Tunza – This U.N. Environment Programme magazine for young people focuses each month on a specific topic related to sustainable living. Read articles written by and for teens around the world.
Environmental Education for Kids – EEK!, an online magazine for grades four to eight, contains articles and activities about animals, plants and environmental issues.
EPA Student Center – Offers information on a wide range of environmental issues. This site includes a section on environmental careers. Or, click on “Fun Activities” to play environmental games.
Kids Saving Energy – Games, tips, facts and information for kids to learn how to save energy. Published by the US Department of Energy.
Field Trip Earth – Travel the world via interviews, discussion groups, field reports, essays, slide shows and educator resources. Start on the “Choose a Field Trip” page, and use the airplane cursor to select a wildlife conservation project you’d like to visit.
Children of the Earth – Promotes a greater understanding and respect for animals, plants, water, soil, air and energy systems. Helps children comprehend the positive and negative environmental effects of our actions.
Flying WILD – A bird education offering for middle schools giving students the opportunity to learn through researching, planning, and hosting a school bird festival. Flying WILD is an initiative of the Council for Environmental Education (CEE) Project WILD program.
Treetures – The “Treetures” are tiny guardians of the forest who teach about trees and how important they are to the environment. Try out tree-themed activities, listen to the Treeture theme song, or send a TreeMail message to your favorite character.
Web Rangers – This is the National Park Service’s site for kids of all ages. Activities are presented for three age groups (6+, 10+, 13+) in categories Adventure, Exploration and Discovery. Challenges, puzzles, games and activities designed to educte children about nature and stewardship.
Green Guide for Kids – Provides children, their families and teachers with information, projects and solutions to help keep the planet green. It also exposes readers to environmental issues around the world as well as right in their own backyard.
Earth Matters 4 Kids – Earth Matters correlates science with basic environmental principles, helping teachers, students (K-6) and community members gain a full understanding of how science works in natural surroundings, by bringing a virtual natural world into the classroom.
New Zealand Eco Kids – a cool site packed full of interactive games, comics, movies and activities, designed to get kids excited about protecting the environment.

January!!

Writing

Some students have complaining about finger pain after all the writing they've been doing the last week and half after coming back from vacation!  They have been writing their fingers to the bone!  They've been working hard by adding more to their fairy tale, by spending lots of time making it perfect by revising and editing, by publishing their fairy tales, or by doing amazing illustrations!  They are almost done and they will be ready to share all their amazing fairy tales soon!  We will be moving into writing fiction stories after next week and thinking about how to add more to our characters and using a story mountain to help us to plan.  Can't wait to get to read all those fairy tales!  I will contact you soon for a "Cinderella Adaptation Day" where the parents can come and listen to all the different ways we have changed the original story of Cinderella!

Want to come and participate during Writer's Workshop?  Please let me know what time and day.  We have Writer's Workshop everyday from 11:35-about 12:20/12:35.  How can you help?  Sit and talk with various students about their writing, help support them with giving them compliments and suggestions about their writing to make it better!

Reading

The last few months have been busy!  We have been learning all about what we can do to be a better reader and learning strategies that help us to understand what we read!  We have been having lots of fun with the Daily 5 and it is a favorite part of the day.  Ms. Chip has been working more with small groups reading together and also working on other activities that help us to understand English better.  

Interested in coming in to join in the Daily 5 activities?  We do Daily 5 or Reading Workshop almost everyday (check your 2C schedules), from 8:15-9:00, again contact me to set up times to come in!  Ways you can support your child or other children is to do a word work activity with them, to sit and read one on one with a student, or help them shop for books that are just right for them! 

Math

We have completed graphing and we have learned all about bar graphs and pictographs, about labels and why they are important, how to read and compare data that are shown on graphs, and also we have made our own bar graphs on the computer! 
Now that we are finished with graphing, we are on our way to....GEOMETRY!  We have been introduced to different 2-D and 3-D shapes, we have looked at their characteristics, sides, edges, and corners (or vertices).  We have built buildings from diagrams and also have built our own buildings!  Geometry is lots of fun as we explore with shapes all around us! 

Again you are welcome to stop in during Math Workshop time as well.  We have math daily from 10:30 to 11:30, just let me know and confirm.  You can support by running an activity or center, or helping small groups with a strategy.  You might have a trick up your sleeve as well that might benefit the students understanding.

Unit

Since the last update we have completed Children Around the World, have learned a lot about ourselves and the people in our class.  We have learned how to respect other people's cultures and how they are similar and different from our own.  We even had a small celebration with food, games, and other cultural activities! 
We are now almost at the end of our Changing Cities unit.  We have learned all about the features of cities, how they change over time, and how people influence a lot of those changes!  We are currently working on city maps we have created and making changes according to scenarios that Ms. Chip has given us.  For instance, 100 more people came to our city or to help a traffic problem in our city.  We will be finished with these maps and our summative assessment by the end of the week and then we are off to learn about Sustainable Environments!  There must be lots of parents who can share some information with us about that!  We would love to hear from you!!! 

Welcome to the 2013-2014 School Year!

Writing:

From the first day of school, we launched the Lucy Calkins’ Writers’ Workshop.  Students have been zooming in on small moments in their lives to share through their illustrations and writing. We will begin working on revising and adding details to our writing.  You may begin to hear your child mention some of the following strategies: adding the inside story, including dialogue, telling the story bit by bit, showing not telling, or acting the scene out to catch missed detail!  I have really enjoyed sharing and listening to individual stories during daily workshop time.  As writers say, “When you’re done, you’ve just begun!”

Word Study:

To start the year, I have been collecting data on your child’s spelling level.  A spelling inventory was taken and words will be given each week based upon their performance on the assessment.  Additionally, we will be studying words and how they are formed through a program called ‘Structured Word Inquiry’.  Students will practice strategies for spelling words correctly such as ‘taste a consonant’.  Additionally, students will learn how prefixes and suffixes can change word meanings.  Be prepared to see words around the house falling under your child’s scrutiny!

Reading:

Each day we discuss specific reading strategies to be used during our daily reading workshop.  Students will be recording their voices while  reading to listen to what they sound like.  They will then reflect upon their reading and come up with an individualized goal to work towards. This will give them more ownership as they begin to improve their reading levels throughout each unit.  The CAFÉ Program focuses upon four major reading areas: Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Expanding Vocabulary.  Within each of these areas, there are various reading strategies used to improve their skill.  Ask your child which strategy they think they are good at.  Ask your child which strategy they want to improve upon this year.  Read with them nightly to help them reach their goal!  RAZ Kids is a great way to ensure they are reading at their grade level.  Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns about RAZ Kids.

Math:

We will be learning all kinds of new, interesting things in math this year! Some of it may seem like more of a review, but it is always good to brush up on our problem solving and math computation strategies! We will begin to practice how to count money,  how to create and read arrays, explore even and odd numbers, find sums of numbers that make 10, pattern hunt, review place value and the list goes on!

PYP Unit:  Authors and Illustrators:

During this unit, we have been exploring all about how authors and illustrators express their creativity.  We have been learning about the differences between fiction and non-fiction books.  Students have become detectives while they read books, looking for clues from the illustrations that show how the pictures were created.  Discuss this with regard to the stories you read together at home. Students are also beginning to think about WHY authors write books.  What are the different purposes of books? Students will additionally try their hand at being published authors and illustrators.  They will find out how they can express themselves to their readers. Let the fun begin!