Today Mrs. Lutz came into our class for a Second Step lesson, which we were all very excited about. The class started off by playing feelings factory and modeling what it looks like to feel a certain way. Then the class took turns discussing a time they felt excited and frustrated. We then learned about two different parts of our brain our amygdala and our cortex. Our amygdala is the part of brain that focuses our feelings and our cortex is the thinking part of our brain. Mrs. Lutz taught us that sometimes the feeling part of our brain takes over in a situation and we react in way that isn't the safest or best choice. We learned ways to cope with our feelings and to use our cortex (thinking part of the brain) to help respond in a better way to a situation.
The second graders have been focusing on writing informational texts for the past few weeks, working hard to teach each other about a topic we are experts on. Each child chose a specific animal they had some knowledge on and then had the opportunity to conduct research to learn more facts about their creature. The kids had to choose at least 3 subtopics to help focus and organize their pieces and even had to reread their piece to determine keywords that should be included in a glossary. They have also been practicing catching the readers attention by using questions or sentence grabbers to excite them about their topic. Today the kids learned another strategy to add to their toolbox that will help them improve their writing, which is the use of mentor texts. We had 2 important questions in our minds as we read an informational text with our "writing lenses": "What did the author do? and Can I do this in my piece?" As as class we read a few pages of Extreme Insects using our "writing lenses" to help focus our attention. We noticed many great things that this author incorporated into their book that we just HAD to try it in ours. Today many of us worked hard to include labels in our illustrations, provide captions, incorporate similes, and even use partner sentences to add more detail about a given fact. Today we had the opportunity to head over to a different elementary school and make some new friends! We first arrived and were able to watch, listen, and enjoy some music, language, and dancing from an African drum circle. Ask me what I thought about the music, clothing, language, and dancing! Some of our classmates even had the opportunity to participate by playing the drums or learning a dance. It was so interesting and fun to learn about a different culture. We also had the opportunity to meet the 2nd grade students from Morris and Warren elementary school and played some ice breaker games to get to know one another. It was a blast playing at recess and eating lunch with them. We even participated in a "table top" Twitter where we wrote our thoughts about the assembly using our markers as our way of speech. We have started a new bend in our reading unit, which is learning how to grow our knowledge by looking through a BUNCH of a books on a topic! We began by choosing a topic of interested and finding at least 2 books on that specific topic. We took a sneak peek to notice the parts that will go together. Students noticed that some of the keywords were the same between both texts, the same chapter titles, and similar facts were presented. Today we practiced this skill together using a Scholastic News article and Raz Kids text on Martin Luther King Jr. The kids took a sneak peek through each noticing which parts would fit together. We discovered that both texts had the key word march, each have a chapter about Dr. King's dream, and we will be learning about his work. We are eager and excited to begin reading each of these texts tomorrow to grow our knowledge of this topic!
Take a look at all the hard work that has been happening in second grade this week! Today we learned the importance of rereading our nonfiction texts like experts. We have been working very hard to develop strategies to help us unlock keywords or tricky words that we come across in a text. We now each have a bag full of "keys" that we can pull out and help us to unlock these along the way. Not only can we use our keys to read the keywords we also have a set of keys that will help us determine the meaning of each. After we worked hard to unlock the keywords and other tricky words we learned that nonfiction readers go back and reread the text like experts. When you reread like an expert you can read each part in bigger scoops taking in new learning without having to stop and think about each word. Ask me to show you how I can reread my text like an expert!
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March 2016
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