With our excitement to return to school from Spring Break, 2nd graders have jumped right into our Realistic Fiction unit in Writing Workshop. We are learning that these stories have real settings, and characters with real problems and solutions. These characters are similar, but different from ourselves in many ways. It was exciting to imagine traits of our characters by thinking about who they are on the outside, then start to think about what makes them interesting and special. We considered where they live, their hobbies and personality, and who the people are that surround them. In our classes we have imagined and developed track runners, musicians, spies, hockey players, female football stars, and ballerinas. As the creators of these characters, we know them best and we cannot wait to continue to develop fun and captivating realistic stories about their lives! Stay tuned.
Second grade scholars have loved exploring Poetry in Writing Workshop! We began the unit by reading a variety of poems: finding inspiration in the humor, beautiful language, and sometimes confusing messages. To begin the unit, we thought like poets do. We thought about words, what inspires or interests us, and what surrounds us every day. When we began to write, we learned about the different tools that poets use to enhance their poems and tried incorporating them into our own writing. In our poetry, we have utilized and experimented with tools such as line breaks, sound words, comparisons, patterns, and alliteration. Drawing upon lists we made early in our process, using our 5 senses in the outdoor classroom, and including our feelings have heightened our poems and fueled us to lengthen them as well. Next week we will be choosing two poems to publish. We can’t wait to share some of our work by reading our poems to our classmates before heading to spring break next week. This week was also a time to celebrate our love of reading with National Read Across America Week! Each year, schools all across our country celebrate Dr. Seuss and his books because many of us began reading and learned to read using his very books! To celebrate the week, students dressed up to honor a different book each day. It was fun to wear green to honor Green Eggs and Ham, wacky socks for Fox in Socks, or stripes for The Cat in the Hat. It was especially exciting to welcome members into our community into our school to read a book of their choice and talk to the Second Graders about what they love about reading. We had so many questions! What a great week! |
