I have received a few emails asking if the Mosaic list is offline. Rest
assured that we are up and running. I'm thinking that many districts are on
Spring Break this week???
This is a great time to share what you have been focusing on in your
classrooms. Or to ask any questions you may have about comprehension
instruction.
I've been working on nonfiction reading/research using questioning as our
springboard. We studied honeybees (Life Science standard) whole class these
past three weeks. Now when we return from break, we are launching our
Physical Science standard study (energy, matter, electricity, sound/light,
gravity, magnetism, simple machines).
I've gathered all the guided reading leveled books I can find in our school
on these topics (our district did a HUGE buy of Pearson SuccessNet books)
and later this week I am going to the public library to grab all the easier
books on our topics.
I had my kids previewing all the Pearson books for two days. Mostly just
exposing them to the topics we will be studying. They wrote down new
learnings in their learning journals. We've been working on listening to
the inner signal (visual or auditory) that goes off when we read something
new that is important.
My kids will choose their top three areas to study by interest. I will
assign them in small groups to become the experts in one area. I am also
using the Lucy Calkins Unit of Study on Nonfiction Writing so they will be
writing All About books on their topic.
We'll start off by listing our I wonders.
I've done this sort of study with third and fourth graders but this has
been my first time with second graders. They did a great job when we were
all studying honeybees (as our model). I had our librarian borrow all the
honey, honeybees, and beekeeper books from the other schools in our district
plus I supplemented with books from the public library. We read a fiction
book as our anchor (and to activate schema) and then we wrote 5 chart papers
of I wonders. They read for days trying to find answers to the class
questions. Then we grouped into chapters of interest (life cycle, how do
bees make honey, how do bees communicate, beekeepers, parts of a bee,
interesting/important facts about bees, types of bees, etc.) and the groups
became the experts. I didn't have them write a book but rather gave each
group a chart paper and they could represent their learnings as they chose.
Then they presented their learnings to the whole class. We watched two
movies on honeybees and we even had a REAL beekeeper come and talk to our
class. It was so validating when he started off by asking my kids what they
know about bees and they just rattled off TONS of information. All things
THEY learned by THEIR OWN reading. Not taught by me lecturing at them.
VERY POWERFUL!! I will be doing some whole group explicit mini lessons on
each science topic to be sure that everyone gets a base of new learnings.
But for the most part they will teach each other with their All About
books.
I like to do science and social studies this way. It puts all the
strategies to use in real reading. Yeah, they aren't perfect at it yet, but
it's a start and to me, it is all about building background knowledge
towards deeper study as they get older. Learning how to navigate nonfiction
text is HUGE in life and this is a sure way to capture their interest.
After studying nonfiction conventions and doing a lot of modeling and guided
groups on catching/reporting new learnings, we are on a roll.
That's what's been happening in my little world. Check in with us on what
YOU'VE been doing with your students!
Ginger
moderator
grade 2
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