January

 

In January, our block was spent preparing for our class play. One way we prepared was by the students performing lots and lots of small group skits. Not only were they fun but they were also a great way to settle into acting and get comfortable thoughtfully using actions to enhance dialogue. Our few weeks of practice flew by, allowing students to try out roles they perhaps wouldn't volunteer for, letting them step into temporarily experiencing life differently.

                                

Our play, Francis and the Wolf, was specifically written for this class and they embraced it wholeheartedly. Many students knew all the lines and everyone could speak about and act out the story with feeling.  Several students fell ill during our performance week and were missed. Others jumped right in to fill the gaps with success.

As a counterbalance to the deep group work called for during the play, we also worked with cursive, which is more internal and individual. Cursive vowels were experienced through large movements, then through practice got smaller and smaller until they fit on the chalkboard, slates, and finally onto paper. 

Similarly, both cursive and dramatic recitation work for the play called for connection and awareness in new ways and both benefitted from lots and lots of lively engaged practice. It's easy to let emotions rise to extremes while acting or have that beautifully connected and flowing writing take over, resulting in giggles that take over the lines or writing jumping off the lined paper, so practice with control was also an underlying theme this month.

             

What a great block, I'm looking forward to next year's play already!

 

Still playing

 

You might recall hearing about the importance of play when your child was in EC (if not, here's a quick refresher). It's something our Kindergarten teachers place a lot of value on for lots of good reasons. Its importance never really goes away, even for us adults, but making time for play comes in different ways in grade school. Activities like Game and Tell give students a big healthy dose of play and all the wonderful social, mental, and emotional aspects that we get to work during play too.

 

    

  

    

Working to understand new rules, negotiating, compromise,  the challenges of things going your way, the challenges of things not going your way, interpersonal relationship shifts, appreciation of another's efforts, wanting your efforts appreciated ... these are all experiences adults have to manage on a weekly basis. But practice for these life happenings is harder to construct. In the early years, children would follow behind you sweeping as you sweep, eager to wash dishes, and so excited to feed the dog, everything mundane becoming a game they imitated with their peers outside or around the house. Their life was play. Now life is broader, it offers new aspects.

These growing children are hungry to learn in less imitative ways now, which we meet during specialties and morning lessons... and yet they still want to practice playing with more grownup behaviors. So yes, let's offer that too.

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Puzzles have been a daily staple in second grade and recently the class completed a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle they've been working on since the fall. Over the past month, students focused on the most difficult part; finding a handful of pieces each day until finally, the end was in sight last Friday. Everyone gathered round to see the last piece placed and a great cheer filled the room. Pure satisfaction!

Week 10: A word feast

Picking up ideas from last week's literacy review, this week we started working with the sounds of vowels and consonants and then delving deeper into why these letter sounds start to change when we put them into words and speak them. 

Students began dividing words into bites and then with more practice, discovered why we can't separate words into any bite size we want to, that we must take bites in certain ways; just like we can't eat in the same way we did as babies. Now, at mealtimes, we are expected to eat in a mannerly fashion, and doing so helps us get what food we need (and be good table guests). We've grown out of that way of eating and grown into new ways, just as students are growing into new ways of reading words. Breaking words into specific syllables (in class we are calling them bites), helps us understand more about the word, and how its letter combinations work together, which lets the words come together into a tasty meal on the book's page.

The saint story for this week was about Hubert, an avid outdoorsman who overcame tragedy and grief to advocate for animal rights. The fable, The Stag and His Reflection, was brought in juxtaposition.

On Friday, we harvested seeds from a pumpkin grown by Mrs. Bowers' third-grade class, who generously shared their bounty with us.  We enjoyed watching their garden grow and look forward to planting ours at the end of the year.

Daily dictation, besides providing math and literacy practice, introduced ten new sight words and a new writing idea this week.  Students received sections of a short story that stopped on a cliffhanger. On Friday, they independently wrote an ending to the story.

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Week 9: Literacy

In our first literacy block this year, we started working on what I consider a foundational idea for students: understanding and accepting that learning, especially learning to read, takes a lot of time, patience, and practice.

We did this in several different ways and student discussion was very lively! Ideas about things that take time and patience were plentiful, such as gardening,  growing a tree that will bear fruit or grow big enough to climb, learning to drive, knitting, studying for a job, building a house, and saving money. 

We also noticed what students have already learned that is essential for reading. They shared that knowing the letters, vowels, consonants, and the many different letter sounds is important to what they are working on now with reading. Through our activities, students had a new idea that much of what they did in Kindergarten was helpful too; like rhyming word games and rich stories they heard, told, and acted out. Our activities also reviewed the major components of the literacy work we did in first grade and refreshed key ideas we will draw on this year.

This week students heard the fable story first, so the saint story could coincide with the Lantern Walk because both have a similar theme.

The story, the North Wind and the Sun, was brought to life on our woven lanterns this year.  This a fable collected by Aesop that highlights the importance of gentleness and kindness over boasting and force.

This fable was counterbalanced by the saint story for the week; Martin, a Roman man whose compassionate gesture of sharing his warm cloak with a needy person led to a life of service and care for others. We were lucky to have two of my former students and Windsong alumni, Adele Beach and Emma Agee, as helpers in the class on Friday. They helped second graders get extra one-on-one practice time, supported students as they worked through tricky bits of the lantern weaving, and drew a lovely chalkboard drawing from the Saint Martin story.

On Friday we also welcomed Mukogawa students for Kamishibai (Kah-me-she-bye) which is a Japanese storytelling technique where narrators read through a story they have illustrated.

Second graders got the chance to teach some of the Mukogawa students a hand-clapping game we've been using to practice the 3s times tables, too.

 

During daily dictation this month, students have been getting sections of a riddle that they piece together as the week goes on. On Fridays, they guess at the answer. This week, I didn't want to share the correct answer because their responses blew the jokey answer out of the park. 

 Q: When things go wrong what can you always count on? A: Your fingers!

Their guesses were heartfelt and sweet; really highlighting how important the people in our lives are. Their guesses included drawings of moms and dads, families, teachers, and friends.

What a nice reminder that all your hard work is making a positive difference for your child!

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2: It's in the details

In this first math block, students have been taking a deeper look at what the four operations (addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division)  do and also how they do their jobs.   

We've compared this to how someone does a chore like feed the dog or load the dishwasher, there are lots of steps to completing the job and lots of ways to get the job done.

All student work starts out with physical experiences; moving gems, moving people, hearing stories that are reenacted etc. and this work is gently moved into conceptual (thinking and writing) avenues.

This week students investigated and discovered some of the properties of addition by testing ideas like:

What happens when zero is added? (Additive Identity property)

Does the order you add in change the answer? (Commutative property)

What about if you're adding more than two numbers, does order matter then? (Associative property)

These ideas are important for our continued work through the elementary years and having working knowledge of these behaviors will certainly come in handy when tackling algebra in later years.

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The saint story for the week was about Moling (Maw-ling), a kind and spirited Irish boy who grew into a thoughtful and caring friend to animals.

Moling's story was counterbalanced by the story The Fox and The Farmer, a compilation of an Aesop fable and a Chinese fable.

Here's a snippet of the fable, shown through students' clay modeling:

A rascally fox catches the scent of the hens,

sneaks past the farmer,

                                         

and tries to nab a snack.

Closer and closer ... 

The fox never guesses the farmer has laid a trap!

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Week 1: Settling In

The first week of second grade was spent remembering and building on old habits, starting some new class traditions, getting to know the new classroom space and everyone's new desk neighbors. We jumped right back into the world of numbers: counting, calculating, story problems, and checking-in on number sense and subitizing skills. Utilizing glass gems, students began to work with equations that prrompted looking at addition in new ways. The beloved daily practice of dictation began again and practice on many new songs and verses was part of the week too.

Also, the two types of stories we will utilize this year were introduced. 

 Our saint stories began with Anna Wang, from the Hebei (huh-bay) province in China. Despite famine and hardship, she cared for others who were being persectued because of their ethnicity. She did not give in to those who used tried to use power and violence against others. They tried to persuade her to help get rid of anyone who didn't belong. But she was tenacious, she wanted to have a free mind; a mind that was open to caring about everyone, no matter their background. Instead of harming others, she comforted and cared for those in danger.

If you're near the classroom afterschool one day, pop in and check out the print of handmade painting of Anna, its in the frame near the chalkboard.

Our fables started with Fox and the Grapes. Mrs. Magee delivered a wonderful rertelling of the classic tale. Students drew pictures and later in the week, used clay to model curious foxes who just couldn't quite get  to those luscious grapes.

A quick group game or puzzle is a wonderful way to start the day!