2D Narrative Report

First Marking Period - November 2011

Sabina Soloway/Jill Driscoll

In discussing your child’s progress during the first trimester of second grade, we thought it would be useful to give an overview of the second grade program. This will allow you to understand your child’s evaluation within this program.

The development of social skills is an important focus in our second grade classroom. Children are encouraged to work cooperatively to solve tasks and to complete projects and activities. In this way, the students come to realize that the adult (or adults) in the classroom are not their only resource; peers can assist them as well. Our classroom management system is based on the principles of mutual respect and cooperation. The children participate in social skill building activities that allow them to develop important skills in the areas of conflict resolution and teamwork. These skills will continue to serve them throughout life.

The development of organizational skills is also an important focus in our classroom.  In short, students are expected to come to class prepared, to keep their materials organized, and to remain focused when working both independently and cooperatively. The first trimester has been spent modeling and explaining these skills. The children are now well aware of what is expected of them, and these expectations continue to be reinforced daily. The ability to budget their time and remain focused on the task at hand allows students to successfully complete assignments.

This trimester in math we began with a unit called Coins, Coupons, and Combinations. In this unit the children developed familiarity with the concept of landmark numbers in our number system. They explored combinations of 10, doubling, and patterns in skip counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s. They have been developing fluency in skip counting and began relating that to grouping (multiples) and the patterns those numbers form on the 100’s chart. As they developed strategies for adding two or more numbers, they also learned the important skill of recording their solution strategies clearly. Students have also been using familiar addition combinations, such as combinations of 5’s and 10’s, to find totals. The students then worked in pairs to express a number using multiples of 5 and explored counting a group in more than one way. We also explored calculators as a tool for problem solving. As a whole class, the girls and boys became familiar with coin values and equivalencies. They found all the possible ways to make 15¢, 20¢ and 50¢ and then found combinations of coupons to equal a given amount. Towards the end of the trimester the students were introduced to combining and separating story problems, where they considered the relationship between addition and subtraction. Students are selecting appropriate strategies for different problem structures, recording their strategies, and interpreting standard notation for addition and subtraction.  Mind-Bending Math has also been introduced which is proving to be an exciting challenge for all the students.  We are delighted to see the girls and boys attempting the problems using a variety of strategies, for example, charts, pictures, guess and check, and simple algebraic equations.  Discussing these problems with families is also a goal of the program and we hope Mind-Benders are proving to be fun for all.  The sharing of the strategies in school on Fridays affords all of the students to see that math can be a multi-faceted process with a variety of roads to correct solutions.

The second grade reading and language arts program consists of many components. An important part of reading instruction is the teaching of decoding strategies. Four days a week the class works to continue to refine and extend their phonics skills. Our word study program focuses on reinforcing what they have learned about letter sounds, rhyming words, decoding and encoding unfamiliar words. Students spend twenty minutes a day focusing on words, their structure, and the manipulation of the sounds within words. Students engage in a variety of approaches ranging from making words, to word sorts, to learning centers, to teacher-led instruction. Mastery and application of these skills allows the students to improve their reading fluency, vocabulary, spelling, and reading comprehension. The girls and boys are exposed to various forms of literature whether it is teacher selected or self selected, as in their independent silent reading books. Each element of the program is designed to further develop the students’ skills, interests, and thought processes in the area of language and literature. In addition to writing for specific writing assignments, such as our Weekend Updates, students write in their Thoughts Journals, Reading Response Journals, and at Writers’ Workshop. This workshop consists of students practicing writing as a process following focused mini-lessons. Organization is a key component to this program. The students must have their proper materials and use their time wisely.

Most of the topics for social studies in second grade are integrated into the language arts program. The class answers a geography question daily to develop geography and mapping skills. As girls and boys were getting settled into the classroom routines, social studies focused on being a member of a community, our Pingry community, and being an American.  In early November the children began a thematic study of prehistoric time periods with an introduction to researching. The Magic School Bus, In the Time of the Dinosaurs, was read as a class and used as a research tool. Concurrently, the second grade worked with Mrs. Baydin in art class to paint a mural of the three time periods in which the dinosaurs lived which now hangs in our hallway as a backdrop to dinosaur work the students completed in class.  They have also been immersed in dinosaur studies in science with Mrs. Cilli and in computers with Ms. Ferris-Rights. As an introduction to our literature discussion groups, an assortment of stories were read aloud to the class. The girls and boys were asked to practice a literature discussion group job (re-telling, read aloud, discussion director, or illustrator) by responding to each story in their Reading Response Journals. The Magic Tree House, Dinosaurs Before Dark, was then read in small literature discussion groups. Following independent reading of the day’s assignment, each child in the discussion group did a different job that he or she then shared with the group.  In addition, using our classroom iPads, each child gathered information about a particular dinosaur. A great deal of the student learning about dinosaurs is now being done in cooperative groups with 2Du students at centers or stations. Each station has a particular focus and requires students to complete a series of tasks independently. For example, the girls and boys are creating scaled facsimiles of their dinosaurs with Craypas, drawing pictures of their dinosaurs on the computer, writing in a variety of ways about their dinosaurs, testing themselves on their knowledge about dinosaurs, and measuring the length of their dinosaurs. Our study integrates science, art, language arts, math, social studies and technology.

Our classroom is full of energy and enthusiasm. We are off to a wonderful start - learning and having fun, too!  Mrs. Soloway is looking forward to meeting with all of you this week and next at conferences, and we are both eagerly anticipating a smooth transition the week of November 28th and look forward to meeting with the group on December 2nd.

Sabina Soloway and Jill Driscoll