Second Trimester

Readers Workshop

I am so excited to continue our readers workshop lessons.  We will be learning a lot this year and I am eager to see how the children will continue to grow and improve.  Our current reading theme is readers use what they know and readers know how stories work.    In this unit, I will be teaching the children how to connect stories to their own lives.  Some of the mini-lessons I will be teaching this semester are the following:

• Making connections

• Activating background knowledge

• Making inferences

• Understanding story grammar

• Identifying and understanding literary devices

• Identifying and using text features

Second Trimester  

Writers Workshop

We have worked very hard the first trimester in writers workshop.  We explored sentence punctuation as well as listening to real stories to develop our own writing ideas.  Our current writing theme is writers extend their writing by telling more and more.  We are working on writing more extended pieces.  Some of the mini-lessons I will be teaching this semester are the following:

• Rereading and adding to tell more

• Exploring sentence punctuation

• Writing on assigned and self-selected topics

• Spelling using letter-sound relationships

• Writing stories about themselves

• Informally revising to tell more

• Publishing a story

 Second Trimester

Math Workshop

We are currently working on addition strategies to solve  addition problems quickly and efficiently.  I am teaching the children how to add two groups of objects to create one large group. Some of the mini-lessons I will be teaching this semester are the following:

•  Using a model and manipulatives to solve addition problems

• Understand and apply the zero property

• Understand and apply the commutative property

• Use a variety of strategies to solve horizontal and vertical addition problems

• Using the counting on strategy

• Understand that different parts can be added to get the same whole-combinations

• Use strategies to  to solve addition word problems

We will also work on various number sense activities to compare numbers.  We will use terms such as before, after or between to compare numbers to 50.  Finally, we will also compare and order whole numbers up to 50.

 Second Trimester

Science

We will be studying animals and their habitats this semester.  This is a very fun and exciting unit of study for the children and they will learn a lot about the many different animal groups and where they live.  Some of the mini-lessons I will be teaching this semester are the following:

• How are animals alike and different

• How can we classify animals

• What are the different classifications of animals

• What are the characteristics of each animal classification

• What is a food chain and how do animals get food

• Where do animals live

• What is a habitat

• What animal lives within each habitat

• What lives in a woodland forest

• What lives in a rain forest

• What lives in a desert

• What lives in the Arctic