Kindness is King

Our second graders have battled germs all week, and I thought I would come out unscathed, but I got sick, too! So, I had to call out sick yesterday. I woke up yesterday morning at my house in Newtown around 7 am. I finished my lesson plans for next week and began to think about a reflection paper all beginning teachers need to write for the state of Connecticut. When 9 am rolled around, my heart dropped into my stomach and it has been there ever since.  I happily bobbed through the halls of those lovely Newtown schools as a first grader on through high school graduation. I learned much about the craft of teaching through my internships and student teaching from the wonderful teachers in those classrooms. My town, in minutes, was shattered by this really unfathomable atrocity.

As I stood in Sandy Hook last night at a vigil--and all day, really--I couldn't help but think about our second graders. Our smart, funny, clever, wonderful second graders, and how thankful I am that they are safe. I put my hand over my mouth and hung my head low when I empathized with the teachers and students at Sandy Hook yesterday morning and just could not, not, not imagine having to go through that. It hit too close to home. It is my home. But now that I have your 16 second graders in tow, my heart broke all the harder.

So on this Saturday morning, I am thinking about all the beliefs I hold dear as a teacher and all the qualities I hold dear in your children. I think about the words I speak to them and the culture of caring we work to establish. I think about the fact that though in the moment the kind words we speak in our room can be short and easy to say and might not seem to matter, their echos are endless. And though I might not bear the fruits of our tireless work of scaffolding kindness in our kids years down the road, I know that our second graders are good people at their core. And I rest assured that they do know--and will continue to know--that our world is a good place. And that they are safe. And cared for. So here's to our students today, who will grow up to make our world a better place and know that sorrow and evil doesn't win, but that kindness is king.

Second Grade Readers in Action

 Since I have just wrapped up completion of our first term report cards, I have been thinking a lot about where our second graders were when they entered 2B in August and where they are now, in December. I happily typed comments for all of our second graders about the growth they each have made in reading, and I feel that I owe it to our second graders to publicly applaud their progress on our blog.

Our students are engaged with all kinds of texts throughout the day--our Morning Message, big books during reading minilessons, read alouds, mentor texts for writing, independent reading books, guided reading books during group work, text on the SMART Board--the list goes on. I like to snap quick pics of our second graders during our reading blocks and throughout the past couple of weeks, I've caught lots of great moments on camera. Here are a few. The blurbs under each will allow you a glimpse into recent focuses in reading instruction. 

Our students read texts on their instructional level each week in guided reading groups. It was exciting to overhear these students animatedly practice our comprehension strategy-asking questions about what we read to dig deeper into nonfiction. They were enthralled by their book about wolves and had many interesting questions, like "why do wolves howl?" and "why don't wolves live everywhere in the world?" These students were even running their own focused book group discussion without adult prompting at all. 

Moments that make my heart happy with such appreciation of our students' abilities.

 Something that I have really stressed with students is the importance of building stamina as readers. We have recently had our first go-round with setting goals for ourselves as readers. This time, they were stamina goals, or the amount of time we can stay focused in a book during independent reading. I think This photo and the photo below are students who we absolutely caught "staying in their book" and living/breathing "focused reading" and "real reading" (as opposed to "fake reading," or just looking the part but not deeply reading and thinking).

In second grade, a greater emphasis begins to be placed on student abilities to respond to texts in writing than in previous years. This lays a foundation for years to come, where students will need to be able to respond to text with increasingly more depth and complexity. This photo captures us "writing about our reading" in thinking through questions the text has raised for us as readers and then putting that question into print on paper.

Sometimes during our reading block, our students visit "word work." This student said to me "take a picture of THIS!" and brought me over to proudly show off his work. He had been reading and then writing spelling words from previous units. There are many choices for students at this station, like working with spelling words as this student did, but also building words out of a set of letters, choosing a beginning consonant blend to generate words with, play phonics games with other students, work with magnet and foam letters, etc.

Enjoy reading with your second grader; they are totally blooming as readers, open to the world of information and enjoyment that books offer us.