Ah... I'm just so proud of my second graders!  Today I just stood back for a moment and watched my class for a few minutes during readers workshop.  It was so awesome to see my group of little ones totally engaged in reading.  In just a few short weeks they've come so far.  The gentle hum of the room speaks loud and clear about what is valued in our classroom.  I'm working hard to instill in the children a passion for reading.  They are reading books, sharing books, laughing together, learning together and writing about their deep thinking.  It's a truly awesome sight! 

We've been talking a lot about wise readers, about making connections and about building endurance during reader's workshop over the past couple of weeks.  We read a story about Sir Shackleton and his polar expedition in 1914.  The kids loved the book.  We learned a lot about endurance from the story and have been applying that to our own lives as readers. 
This week we have also been talking a lot about targets.  We must know ourselves as readers and seek to grow.  Setting learning targets helps us grow as readers.  Each of the children has taken time to set a reading target and recorded it in their reader's notebook.  We also started our CAFE board where we post our reading targets. 

Our writing unit has been very exciting.  We looked at several books last week that were silly animal stories.  We explored several texts and learned from those authors before trying out our own silly animal stories.  This week we are reading some silly "scary" stories (not too scary... books like There Was An Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything).  We brainstormed some scary words like dark, shadows, boo, creaky, etc and then the children began their own scary stories today (no blood or gore). The kids just seem to love writer's workshop and beg for more time each day. 

One of the highlights of our week has been computers.  I am teaching the children to use SMART Notebook software.  We will be using this software to publish our writing pieces.  I taught a college course this past weekend on using the software... and I think my little second graders are learning faster than some of my college students.  They've already learned to change fonts and font color, add images and insert new pages.  They have taken to it like fish to water.  They've also learned how to save to their flash drives. 

In spelling we have learned some new spelling songs, learned about compound words and contractions and explored the many ways to make the long e sound. 

We're really having a lot of fun and learning a lot!