Newsletter: Week Ten

Dear Families,

Have you been following the World Series? I am originally from St. Louis and grew up, as most boys in the metro area did, a very big Cardinal baseball fan. I remember my dad and I spending many nights listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon call the games on KMOX. I was eight years old in 1982 when the underdog Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers (and their three future Hall of Famers) in seven games. The games were on far too late for me to see but my parents did pull me out of bed to see the final out retired in the seventh and deciding game. I’m reminded of this as I follow the Cardinals (again the underdog) taking on the Texas Rangers in this year’s World Series. Living on the east coast, the games are even later now than before. My wife Tricia generally falls asleep by the fifth inning and I can’t say I blame her. As I sit here typing this newsletter the Cardinals have just taken a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the seventh inning of game two. If you have no loyalty to the Lone Star state I invite you to root along.

As I trust you know, we are beginning our first expert projects of second grade. It’s so great to see how excited the kids get when learning we’re about to start our research projects. When I was a kid I’m quite sure the declaration “Okay class, we’re about to begin some research” would have been met with big sigh or, worse yet, a moan. I sometimes see parents take a deep breath when hearing that expert projects are coming around the bend. All I can say to those of you who feel a bit of angst is “Never fear, we’ll do the vast majority of these projects AT SCHOOL.” I’m sure if I sent them home they’d come back looking much more polished and grammatically correct than what we might produce at school but, as second graders, I’m much more interested in the process than the product. We’ll learn about non-fiction features such as the Table of Contents, sub-headings, use of italics, timelines, maps, and a whole lot more. We’ll study non-fiction texts to imagine what we might want our own writing to look and sound like. We’ll learn to identify key information, summarize it in our own words, and turn these facts into rich text.

What we’ll see at the end will be the product of a lot of really hard work. Sure it’ll look like a seven, eight, and nine-year-olds created it. But, hey, that’s exactly what it should look like. We’ll be so proud of their efforts and feel good about all the learning that took place along the way.

So, what is your role in all this? You’ll be asked to help them find resources at the beginning of the project. If someone gets behind they may bring their resources home over a weekend to catch up. From time to time we might ask for some feedback before moving on to the next step. And, finally, in a few weeks the kids will bring home their facts to begin creating a project board they can share during their presentation to the class. That’s it. No timeline. No due dates. No stress. This will be both a great learning experience and a whole lot of fun!

To prepare for these projects the kids have been studying Ranger Rick magazines this week. Using some of what they’ve seen in these magazines, they are beginning to write their own non-fiction books about familiar topics. Some of these include: Amazing Animals, How to Make the Perfect Christmas List, Cooking, Cambodia, Video Games and Movies, and Scrapbooking. We’ll continue to study non-fiction writing and create these short texts over the next few weeks. This work will transition us into the writing element of our expert projects. Be sure to ask your child about these projects.

Have a great weekend,

Chris