2nd Grade Fun!

It has been a fast and furious start to our school year together. We have jumped right into our learning. I intend to use this blog to keep you updated on what is going on in the classroom. Feel free to scroll back to previous classes I’ve taught to see what kind of activities we’ve done in the past. I find the blog an effective way to connect what we’re doing in the classroom at home. Use this resource as a way to ask your child what we’re doing in the classroom, apply what we’re doing at home at school, etc. I hope you find this blog useful! Below is a summary of a few lessons we’ve done  so far.



We worked on what’s called “Stop and Jot.” We practiced stopping while reading, thinking about what we read, and retelling what we’ve read to ourselves. Stop and jot is a strategy students can use to jot quick notes to remind them what they’ve read. Their jot can be a short phrase, a picture, a symbol, and so on. They seem to love this strategy! When reading at home, encourage them to give it a try and share their thinking with you.

We’ve had a few students begin to teach the class during our morning Math Review. They’ve blown me away so far with their teaching skills.

Rather than myself categorizing the books in my library, I took some time to allow the students to categorize our classroom library in a way that makes sense to them. This also gave the students the opportunity to explore what kind of books are in the classroom library. Each student was given a giant bag which is their “shopping bag.” Each week the students will shop for their books for the week. The first week we started with 7 books. We’re focusing on how to select just right books by reading the blurbs on the back, doing a 5 finger test (if you open a book, read a page, and find that 5 or more words were too challenging to read, then a different book might be a better option), and what kind of books they find interesting. We’ve shopped one time so far and the students seemed to love it!