Beginning Memoir

We are beginning our first genre study and it will result in our first published memoirs. A memoir is a personal narrative about important memories. They are detailed and contain a lot of emotional meaning. Today, in class we read one of my favorite memoirs, Crow Call by Lois Lowry. It's about her going on a hunting trip with her dad who just returned from the war. I asked the students to come up with some observations from the book.

"It's very realistic."
"The pictures looked lifelike."
"I thought she was very enthusiastic."
"She chose words that were calm and peaceful."
"She had other people talking in the story."

These are all very important observations that will help guide us as we prepare memoirs of our own. The class came up with some memories and we categorized them. Obviously there could be other categories, but here you go:

-Vacations
-Visiting relatives
-Medical emergencies (broken arms, bumped heads)
-Birthdays
-Important firsts
-Beach trips
-Major accomplishments (Aquil said he hit a home run!)
-Overcoming fears
-Fun memories
-Tiny but important moments (Addison mentioned a time a girl stopped what she was doing to help her get a basketball that rolled in the street)
-Sad memories
-Time with parents
-Brothers or sisters being born
-Hero moments

After we made the list, the students went off and made a personal list of 3 memories. They are bringing it home tonight. Their homework is to talk through their list with you and work on narrowing it down to the BEST choice. The best choice would be the one that your child has the most details in their retelling. You can show them pictures of these events, or you could even say, "Remember when this happened?" so they come up with a brand new idea that they didn't think of today. The goal is that every student has picked a topic that will be a good choice for them as we begin this genre study. Monday, we will begin writing.

B

Pics of the New Foote Family

So, some observations from the day:

1. We could start our own pick-up basketball team.

2. These kids love music.

3. My pizza budget might need to increase substantially.

Seriously guys, I'm experiencing tremendous joy right now. I don't really understand how to explain it. But, I thought you would like to see a few pics from our afternoon.

Update

We have been busy using our awesome brains in the last two weeks. Along the way, we've done some pretty neat stuff that I wanted to share with you.

Economics and Communities

We broke up into groups and created communities with tax money. Some groups had rural communities, some suburban, and some urban. The rural communities had the least money and the urban community had the most, related to how many people could be taxed. Each group had a sheet with things they needed to build, such as police stations, fire departments, and schools. Each community had to have utilities such as power lines, sewage, and water treatment facilities. To keep track of their spending, the kids used calculators and a ledger.

After balancing their budgets, the students began building their communities by drawing on poster boards. They used the ledgers as a guide. They weren't allowed to build anything they hadn't paid for. Along the way, the students learned how difficult it is to plan communities and how communities with more people have more than those with less people.

Damien and Aubree named theirs "Labor City" where every day is Labor Day. Nice!

Here is a video that the kids have been begging me to put on the blog.

Math

We are still working with learning how to decompose numbers and combine them to add and subtract. This is the building block of regrouping, which is huge for 2nd grade. It helps the students see that when you're carrying, it's not just a 1, it's actually a 10. To help us practice, we played a math game called Race to 100, which is a very simple game you could play at home. All you need is 2 dice. Your child would love to teach you!

Writing

Next week, we will begin our Memoir or Personal Narrative study, but we wanted to get an initial published piece accomplished so we better understood the process that authors go through. These are choice pieces. Some kids chose to write nonfiction, others fiction. The important thing was moving through the process of making revisions and editing so an audience can better understand it. These pieces will be shorter than the personal narratives we will write beginning next week. I'm very excited about the Memoir study. One suggestion is to help your child come up with some ideas of important and meaningful memories that are just begging to be written.

Reading

We have been looking closely at reading responses such as summarizing and predicting. We also are practicing reading strategies such as chunking words, looking at spelling patterns, and skipping the word to read around it. As a chapter book read aloud, we have been reading Frindle by Andrew Clements. 

Explorations Pics

And this last pic is of Anna, Maiya, and me bringing back the colonial look.

Homework: Due Monday 9/21

Reading Log
Log 5 days, no summaries needed.

Math Packet
3 sheets. Two sheets are word problems; please make sure your child writes the equation or number sentence for each problem. The other sheet is mixed addition and subtraction.

Spelling List
Beginning this week, your child will have a weekly spelling list. They will see a few weeks on one sheet of paper, but they will only focus on 1 week at a time. If you feel they are ready to work on others, feel free. Since this is our 1st week, start with Week 1, not Week 5.

over
new
art
take
only
car
park
hard
barn
card
shark
dark
oh
eyes
timeline
hold

Homework (Blog Post to Come Later)

Homework: (Due Monday)
No math homework this week. Instead it's a reading log but only 4 days to log. Additionally, your child will do a short summary about the selection of text they read on 2 nights. It can come from the same book, just different parts of the story. This is to be written on notebook paper. The total of the 2 summaries shouldn't go beyond a full page (just one side). We're working on finding the most important information from the text to share. Have your child show you what they wrote and check for clarity of thought and ask them to probe their thinking more if you feel they need to add more important info.

Update, Homework, and Dates

So, we made it through our first full week of school. One of the things that impressed me about the kids, and I shared this with them Friday after Gathering, is how quickly we have made the transition from summer/1st grade to what we are expected to do as 2nd graders. They are growing in their understanding of how they fit into a smaller classroom with more responsibilities and expectations. Now that we have that in our heads, we are able to take our experiences to another level!

Last week, we spent a lot of time going over procedures such as how to use a chart to log our independent reading choices and then we reflected on the chart to set goals for ourselves. Some noticed that they read only nonfiction, some noticed that they chose a different book each day, some noticed that they read more as the week went on.

We also spent some time observing different types of maps and pictures of the world. We started by looking at the world map, noticing how continents were landmasses consisting of several countries. We also checked out this guy here:

https://twitter.com/StationCDRKelly

This is Scott Kelly, an astronaut who posts pictures of the Earth on his Twitter feed. We were able to see pictures of "Hurricane" Danny and the northern islands of Canada.

After we looked at countries, we shifted our focus to the states. We looked at atlases in groups and recorded our observations. This also provided us with valuable practice for working with our peers.

In Math, we have been working at understanding the number 10, how we can create number bonds to help us make 10, which makes adding and subtracting significantly more efficient. It also builds our number sense.

Finally, we have begun Explorations and the excitement is so evident in the students. I was impressed at the choices they were making. GarageBand seems to be a class-favorite, as well as building with the K'nex and Contraptions. Here are some pictures:

Here are pictures from the Gathering where Marley, Wyatt, and Paula Kay were introduced by their fellow students.

Sidenote: Let's say your awesome kid does something awesome at home and wants to share that awesome thing with their awesome friends. Send it to me in an email!!! I'll put it on the blog so that it can make the Internet more awesome! Will's family sent this to me last week.

I'll be posting tons of pictures this year, so if you don't see your kid in these, you'll see them in other posts.

Homework
Due Wednesday: Your child will ask you a few questions about taxes, they will write down your answers and bring them back to class Wednesday. This will help us as we understand how citizens fit into their communities.

Due next Tuesday: Math packet and reading log.

Dates
Tuesday, Sept. 8: MAP Reading
Tuesday, Sept. 15: MAP Math
Thursday, Sept. 17: Opening Picnic
Thursday, Sept. 24: Early Dismissal/Parent-Teacher Conference Day (Let me know if you would like to meet)
Thursday, Oct. 8: Curriculum Night #1
Friday, Oct. 16: Zoo Trip and our 1st Gathering...eeesh, your kids will be exhausted for that weekend.

Adoption Update
We fly out early Saturday to see the kids for Labor Day weekend. We also got our official dates for them to move out here! Weekend of Sept. 19th. I'll probably take a couple of days off that following week as we help our family adjust to the changes. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers. Thanks!

Homework, Dates, and the Week Ahead (Week 2)

Good morning families,

I trust that all of you had a pleasant and life-giving weekend. We had family in town this weekend and my house had, at one point, 16 kids in it for Conner's birthday party. Good practice I guess.

Homework
Your child is to read 20 minutes each day, including Saturdays and Sundays. Each day after they read, they will log their choice into a reading log. They will have to write the title, type of book (fiction or nonfiction), and the number of pages read. They should write the number of pages in a subtraction math fact. For example, if I ended reading on page 23 but started on page 16, I could write 23-16=7. Any practice with math is good practice!

Also, your child will have a very short math packet where he/she will practice the math concepts we explored last week. Please look over this with them and help them correct miscues. Doing so will provide you insight into how they are working through the concept and help reinforce some of the learning.

Both of these assignments are to be completed and turned in before Explorations on Monday, August 31st.

Dates
Monday, 9/7: Labor Day, no school
Thursday, 9/17: Opening Picnic, hold on times
Thursday, 9/24: Early Dismissal, conference day

If you would like to schedule a conference with me for that Thursday, send me an email.

The Week Ahead
This week, we are going to look at the reading strategies that our parents are using when they read. We'll categorize them and come up with strategies that we can fall back on when we are trying to figure out how to say a word or figure out what a word means. If you have some that didn't make it in the packet, feel free to post some in the comments!

We are still setting up our Writer's Workshop time. Today, we compiled lists to help us have a point of reference for thinking of ideas to write about. As we "get the cobwebs" out, we will be working on ending punctuation in our writing.

In Math, we are working on fluently adding and subtracting within 20, including decomposing numbers to help us begin to understand what regrouping actually does.

In Unit of Study, we are going to look at maps this week, including how populations are distributed based on resources available.

Adoption update: Tori and I are flying out the beginning of Labor Day weekend to visit the 4 kids and we'll get to hang with them for 3 days. The paperwork has been completed by both Texas and SC and so it should be happening soon! Keep us in your thoughts and prayers. Thx.