Newsletter (in photos): December 7th

Reading continues to be such an awesome part of our school day. The structure for our
reading workshop generally consists of a 20 minute mini-lesson, and 30 minutes of independent
reading (during which time I conference with the kids to both assess and offer support).

Our instructional assistant, Mrs. Shealy, is also in the classroom
during independent reading time to conference one-on-one with the kids
as well as work with small groups. 

Our ability to work with readers around the room during independent
reading is made possible by the fact the kids have  built up some impressive
reading endurance (we began the year only able to read for about five minutes
before many became distracted and restless). The soothing calmness that
usually settles upon the room during this times is such a great indicator of our
growth as readers. I love sitting beside the kids and watching their broad
smiles as they tell me all about their books. 

Our mini-lessons are constructed around the specific inquiries in which we
are currently engaged. So far this year we have explored making good book choices,
fluency, discussion literature, word solving strategies, and a few different comprehension
strategies. Our current inquiry is an author study of Jacqueline Woodson.

Studying an author allows us an opportunity to discuss literature. identify
and discuss patterns across multiple texts, begin speaking to the role of an author's
intent within a piece of writing, identifying the power of knowing a genre
or author well enough to predict what to expect from new texts before we even read
them, and so much more. 

Jacqueline Woodson is a fabulous writer who is not at all
afraid to use her stories to help children consider and explore the
worlds of those who may different from them in many ways. This could
include stories about children in foster care, who have an incarcerated
parent, who don't feel welcomed within a new school, etc. 

Many of the books we have read so far have been heavily influenced
by her Woodson's personal experiences and family. For example, This Is
The Rope tells the story of a length of rope that is passed down through multiple
generations within a family - including their big move from South Carolina
to New York City (as part of The Great Migration). 

We stop many times within each book to discuss what we are noticing
as well as what we are thinking or wondering. These ideas become the
content we add to our class chart declaring what we are learning about
Woodson's body of work as well as her particular author's craft. In many ways,
this author study grows from and builds upon the work the kids did in the first
grade with their author expert projects. The kids have been doing a wonderful
job of engaging with each book in some really meaningful ways. 

In math we've transitioned from our work around addition with regrouping
to a study of subtraction with regrouping. Of course, they're very closely related
so learning the first helps us better make sense of the second.

Much of our work so far has called on the kids to use dimes and pennies
to solve increasingly complex subtraction problems. 

For instance, when they are solving a problem such as 81-67 they quickly
realize they cannot subtract seven pennies (ones) from one penny and will need
to trade a dime (a ten) for ten pennies (ten ones). The use of the coins makes so
much sense to them in regards to contextualizing these problems because they understand
that ten pennies make one dime and that one dime makes ten pennies. Just recently
we've begun trying to solve these problems without the coins. The kids are doing wonderfully
but this really is hard work. This is the sort of concept/skill that will take many of them
quite a while to truly comprehend and master. For this reason, we'll get a solid start during
this focused study and continue to work at such problems throughout the remained of the
year.

In social studies we spent a bit of time exploring the concept of power. We defined
this as the ability to make decisions for yourself as well as for others.

We thought about the ways in which the kids make decisions on their own, have decisions
made for them by an adult, and make negotiated decisions between themselves and an adult
while at school. Then they went out to think about how this looks when they visit
a grandparent's house.

These sheets became great conversation starters in regards to discussing the ways in which
our power shifts from one place to another. We also noticed our power shifts within the same
location depending on who we are with and what we are doing. The concept of power was then used
when reading books from a text set addressing hunger and homelessness. Power became one lens
we could use to understand the role of money and education in determining what choices people
have in regards to many facets of their lives. This study has been designed to help the kids better
understand why we are collecting cans, where this food is going, and what sorts of families
might be receiving it.