First day of school

We had a fantastic first day of 2nd grade!  We are working hard this week on getting down our routines and procedures for 2nd grade!

Ms. Gardner

Welcome to 2nd Grade!

I am so delighted that your child is in my class this year!  

We can all look forward to many enjoyable and rewarding experiences as the year progresses.  

Our lunch is from 10:50-11:20 each day. You are welcome to join us for lunch! We will rotate through specials from 11:55-12:55 on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and from 1:25-2:50 on Tuesdays.  

It is going to be an exciting year!  

 

Ms. Gardner

Classroom Assessment

The goal of assessment is to guide instruction.  

Assessment plays an important role in our reading, writing and language instruction.  We use formative and summative assessments as inquiry to help us discover what the student knows.  We must also create assessments that are developmental.  It must be geared toward the student you are assessing, even if this is on a variety of developmental levels.  Finally, assessments should be used for progress monitoring. We must use the data from the assessment to determine student growth and learning.   

Assessments data can be collected from:

• Standardized tests
• Classroom portfolios
• Informal observations
• Student conversations  
• Discussing and questioning 
• Interviewing 
• Student work samples 

Teaching Reading in the 21st Century: Motivating All Learners. 5th ed. / Michael Graves…[et al.].   

The Reading-Writing Connection

The purpose of writing is for that piece of writing to be read, either by ourselves or by someone else.  We recognize the value of teaching reading and writing in conjunction because they complement each other so well.  

To promote a positive reading-writing environment we must provide students an opportunity to: 

• Write for important purposes
• What students write should be valued by the people in the classroom community
• Writing should function to communicate or to foster the writers' own learning, understanding or appreciation  

The Process Approach to Writing

The process approach is composed of steps students follow to create a final writing piece.  The steps include: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and publishing.  

Informal Writing Forms 

This type of writing tends to occur when a student is writing for his or her own purposes.  

1. Writing to learn and understand

• Note taking
• Brainstorming and quickwriting
• Semantic mapping
• Venn diagram 
• Journals

     2. Writing to Communicate 

• Letters
• Biographies
• Reports 

    3. Imaginative Writing

• Stories
• Poems 

Teaching Reading in the 21st Century: Motivating All Learners. 5th ed. / Michael Graves…[et al.].  

Vocabulary Development

Strong vocabularies are an important component of literacy.  Understanding the meaning of words is important for students to be able to comprehend the information they do read.  Students will use these vocabularies in their own speech, their writing and in their reading.  Teacher read-alouds, recorded audio books, independent reading and engaging discussion sessions help students indirectly acquire vocabulary.  Even though students will learn many more words than we can directly teach each year, we can give students strategies to become independent word learners.  

Word Learning Strategies:

• Using context clues
• Using word parts 
• Using the dictionary

Teaching Reading in the 21st Century: Motivating All Learners. 5th ed. / Michael Graves…[et al.].

 Click HERE for Edutopia's Techniques for Teaching Vocabulary to Elementary Students 

for examples of what we should DO/DON'T do in vocabulary instruction. 

Independent Reading

Independent reading is used to help students turn to reading for the purpose of pleasure, to find information, gain insight and for many other reasons.  

Students must be given time to develop into strong independent readers. They must be immersed in an environment that allows for many opportunities for independent reading.  

Teachers must provide books that include topics that are interesting to the teacher student.  They must also provide books with a variety of genres and reading levels.  These books must be organized in a way that allows students to easily pick a book that is the right topic, genre and reading level. 

Students will create some type of follow-up assignment after independent reading.  This can be a simple illustration of an important event or character from the story.  Students will given choice in the type of assignment they would like to complete after reading a story.  

I believe it is important for my students to set goals in their reading.  This goal may be to finish a certain amount of books, to have a certain comprehension score, to earn a certain amount of points or to read so many books from a certain genre.  This goal will look different for each student in my classroom.  I also think it is important to celebrate when a student has met a goal in their reading.  This is a great way to encourage other students to meet the goals they have set for themselves in their independent reading. 

Teaching Reading in the 21st Century: Motivating All Learners. 5th ed. / Michael Graves…[et al.].