Newsletter: Tuesday, December 1st

Hey Everyone,

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving break with your families. They certainly came back with lots of fun stories - if not about travel, then about food.

We've been up to a lot these past few weeks of school. Here's a recap of some of our most recent work in writing and in math...

As I teach from the front of the room on my computer, the kids in the classroom
follow along on their computers so they can see the books I read from the document camera,
hear the ideas of the kids at home, etc. If you haven't already, please make sure you
charge their computers each and every night and ensure they have working headphones. 
This makes our work in the classroom so much easier.

In writing we've started looking at pieces written by other (unknown) second grade
writers and identifying everything they already know how to do really well as a 
writer (what's working in their piece) as well as what we feel we could help them
improve (what's not working so well). As we have these discussions, we learn a lot 
as we explicitly name what makes a piece of writing stronger and more
engaging.

Here's an example of one such piece we have critiqued together.

Many of the kids' observations focus on basic mechanics of writing. However, 
over the course of the next year-and-three-quarters that will change dramatically.
They will eventually begin taking notice of more complex aspects of author craft.

Most recently, we've launched an author study. For the next two weeks we'll be
studying the writing of author Matt de la Pena. 

de la Pena is an author who works very deliberately to represent
communities of people who are too often missing from our library shelves -
particularly Mexican Americans. 

The first book we've read from this author is Carmella Full of Wishes. It tells
the story of a young girl who wants more than anything to be allowed to go with her
brother as he heads out into the neighborhood. 

As we study de la Pena's writing, we are first focusing on how he constructs his 
stories. Specifically, the kids are identifying the "story arc" (or "story mountain") that
gives shape to the growing conflict within the story. As writers, we're learning how
this pre-planning can help us develop richer stories and more detailed writing. 

We're also paying careful attention to how productive we are each day when
working during independent writing time. Our goal is to get enough words on the 
page (most days) to demonstrate an honest effort. Of course, some days are harder than 
others. These are days we spend more time thinking than writing. That's okay. That said,
I'm hoping to see a pattern over time that demonstrates an ability to focus on the task
at hand.

In math we moved from linear measurement back to computation
strategies. Our work this week (and part of last) has been to make 10s
to simplify the addition of a series of numbers.

As you can see in this example, when the kids group numbers into 10s
it makes relatively quick work of what would otherwise be a very difficult
problem to compute correctly.

We can also use 10s to solve basic addition problems. Strategies such as these are incredibly
helpful for some of the kids. For others, they are still much more comfortable using their fingers
or drawing tallies. Our goal, however, is to eventually help everyone develop enough number sense
to think about numbers, place value, and computation with increasing complexity.

That's what we're up to in writing and math. In the next newsletter I'll highlight our work as readers and social scientists. As always, thanks for everything you do to support our efforts. I promise you I am doing my very, very best to make this work. To be honest, though, more afternoons than not I head home feeling disheartened by the amount of challenges we faced that day that are out of our control - challenges that often derail our opportunities to learn and leave me feeling as though I've failed the kids. They've been so patient and understanding but they deserve more than any of us are able to provide right now. 

All that said, the kids seem awfully happy throughout much of the day. That's definitely worth a lot. We'll keep plugging away and trying to find new ways to address the challenges of teaching and learning in the midst of a pandemic. If there's anything in particular you know your child needs please let me know so I can do what I can to be responsive to their needs. This is such a incredible bunch of kids. I look forward to the day we're able to safely dig into some richer learning experiences together. I know you all feel the same.

Chris