Newsletter: May 22nd

Dear Families,

Many of our big inquiries are now behind us as we wind down and prepare for the end of the year and summer. That's not say, however, that our days are in any way atypical. Much of the work we're doing now is to review key aspects of our second grade curriculum. One piece of this has been our recent work with news articles. I regularly share current news with the kids at Morning Meeting as well as invite them to share articles and stories of their own. Today I brought in a diverse collection of articles from a great children's news site (Newsela) that allows me to adjust the reading "level" of any article to meet the needs and comfort level of each reader. The kids were tasked with working in partnerships to read the article, highlight key information, and then respond to what they read using stems such as "I noticed...", "I think...", "I feel..." or "I wonder...". We are now in the process of sharing these articles out, a few at a time, each day. Here are some pics of our articles and the kids at work.

Next week we'll begin a project in reading workshop that will be designed to prepare the kids for a summer reading project they'll complete and bring back in next August to share with us. The projects will be simple and will not include any required texts of any kind (rather, the kids will read casually as they always do and then report back to us about some of their favorite titles). Look for information about this project in next week's newsletter!