This week we have had a great time in class. Our Language Arts story was a biography on Helen Keller and the class seemed to thoroughly enjoy it. One of our centers this week had the students writing their name in Braille. First they wrote it in pencil and then they were able to write it using some glue and gems. The students were quite proud of seeing their names written in Braille.
One of the other things we did with the story of Helen Keller was watch this short video clip from "The Miracle Worker." The class was very impressed to see how Helen was able to eventually identify things and objects by their names.
Our new unit in math has been on graphing. We have been learning about all sorts of graphs, including tally charts, line graphs, bar graphs, plot line graphs, and pictographs.
Each day this week we have taken a new class survey to graph. We have graphed, "What is your Favorite Subject in School?", "Our Favorite Vegetables," and "How many Letters in our First Names."
Vegetable Tasting for our Survey
Our Data -- Carrots won by a long shot as the favorite, where the least favorite was most certainly broccoli!
In science we have been continuing our study of Earth and Space Science, with a focus on the idea that some events one earth occur quickly while others occur slowly. This week we discussed wind and how it works. In partners, the students built a wind gauge. We took them onto the playground on Thursday afternoon to test them out. Some of the students thought that our wind gauges were broken because they didn't turn like we had anticipated. However, Thursday happened to be the one day this week there was almost no wind at all. So, the wind gauges were not broken and it was determined that they were working exactly as they should since there wasn't any wind that afternoon.
Watching and hoping for even a little bit of wind!
We also had a character trait assembly this afternoon. Congratulations to Lexxi and Jacob for earning our Responsibility Awards for the month of January.
Congratulations to our Class Dojo Star for this last week!
With all of the rain we have been having lately, I felt it was the perfect time to start talking about erosion. My original plan was to walk around the school and find some examples of what might be erosion, but since the rain didn't really let up much this week that might have to be a continuation lesson for next week. For our main investigation this week, the students were put into pairs and built a sand tower. The students took a cup full of sand and turned it upside down onto their work surface. Then each pair of students was given a water dropper and had to add water to their tower. Some groups counted on drops for a very short time and some continued to count for quite awhile.
Before Erosion
Before Erosion
Before Erosion
Before Erosion
Erosion in Action
Our lowest number of drops before there was a change was 47 and our highest number of drops before there was a change was 201. We discussed how if you drop the water in the same place the whole time, then that area will erode faster and there will be a change sooner. The students noticed that if you spread out the drops of water, then it took much longer (and more water) to erode. As a class we also talked about how each of the towers were shaped differently to begin with, even though they all used the same type of cup to form their towers.
Later we watched this video on erosion.
We ended the activity with each student eating a lollipop (as discussed in the video) and talked about some facts about erosion.
Yummy Erosion!
Our latest addition with our Class Dojo points, is our Class Dojo Star. This goes to the student who has the most points at the end of the week. They get a very special reward and get to sit at a desk all by themselves, where they have their own special supplies and they get to sit in a fun decorated desk. The student has the choice to sit there everyday of the following week and it really sets them apart as someone who is doing what they need to in class. Check out our first Class Dojo Star!
This week seems to have gone by very quickly. In math this week, we started our unit on Fractions. We talked about how fractions are part of a whole. The students made their own fraction booklets that show 1 whole, two halves, three-thirds, and four-fourths.
The class has also been having fun with singing our fraction song, "Fractions Down on the Farm."
We have also begun the process of making fraction kites where the students have colored in a 5x5 grid in different colors. Then they had to write a math sentence about their kite by telling which fraction of their kites were which colors. (Pictures to follow next week when they are complete.)
Our story for this week in Language Arts was, "Ah, Music" by Aliki. I personally, had a really fun time teaching this story. It was a great review of what our class did for the Second Grade Christmas Performance. We talked about performances, volume, and tempo of music. This non-fiction piece of writing was a great way to spiral back to some events that our class actually participated in.
To take our story even further this week, we did a little bit of painting. I showed the students some pictures of the Northern Lights and we talked about how they are formed. Then I put on some music and the students painted their own Northern Lights based on how the music made them feel. It was very interesting to see how different the Northern Lights could look from different perspectives.
I am going to start off this post with a very quick recap of what we did the week before winter break. It was a whirlwind of a week, so much that I barely managed to get any pictures. In that week before break we managed to get in a lot of different activities. We had a Polar Express day where we read the book and watched the movie and did a compare/contrast activity between the 20 page book and the 90 minute movie. As should be expected, there were quite the number of differences between the two and the students didn't want to leave any out of the discussion. We also had a gingerbread day during that week. On gingerbread day, the students were able to do some writing and coinciding taste-testing about gingerbread. They wrote paragraphs on how to eat a gingerbread man. It was amazing to see how many different ways there are in the minds of second graders. Some started with the head and finished with the feet, while others started on each limb and worked their way back to the head. Not everyone enjoyed tasting the gingerbread, but it was certainly a fun experience to have as a whole class. One of the days that week was snowflake day. We read a non-fiction book called "Snowflake Bentley" and learned all about how he took pictures of snowflakes in order to study them before they melted. To end that day the students had a chance to make their own snowflakes with just a folded piece of paper and a pair of scissors. In between all of these fun holiday activities we also managed to finish our final dress-rehearsal for our Christmas performance. Both the morning and evening performances were a huge success. In the evening, there was standing-room only available in the cafeteria during out performance. The class did great and should be incredibly proud of all the work they put into the performance and the many practices between Thanksgiving and Winter Break.
To end our week before break we had a very small class "party" where I brought in sugar cookies and the students decorated them with different colored frosting and many sprinkles. It was a great way to end the week and celebrate as a class.
(In all honesty, I was hoping to post the Christmas stuff before now, but I guess I got wrapped up in my own winter break.)
Now that we have been back for a week, let's get updated on the current classroom activities and curriculum. In math our focus has been learning how to tell time. This at first was a challenging skill for some, but throughout the week all of the students were able to master parts or all of this skill. While learning about how to tell time, I wanted to make it fairly easy for the students to remember which hand was the minute hand and which was for the hours. So, we decided as a class that the tallest teacher at our school is Mr. Ferrell (Kindergarten), so he became our minute hand because it was nice and tall. It was also decided that Mrs. Crook is quite short, so I became the hour hand. Many of the kids loved this idea and it became much simpler to determine which hand was which on the clock. The class laid out giant clocks on the floor in their groups using 3x5 cards with the numbers written on them for the hours and some linking cubes in groups of 5, which represented the minutes in-between each of the numbers on the outside of the clock. They turned out really good.
To add to the unit, each student made a clock like the one pictured below. The idea here is that each number on the clock gets its own room. Once the students realized where each of the numbers' rooms were, this became a great strategy to identify the hour...especially when it starts to get a little tricky as you get closer to the next hour starting.
We have also played quite a few games this week to help learn how to tell time. We played "Red Light, Green Light" with mini clocks one morning. The students had to show me the time that was called out on their mini clocks and if they were correct, they took a step forward and were given a green light. If they showed the incorrect time, they got a red light and had to stay where they were. Even though it was a cold morning when we played, I think the class had a great "time" with this game.
This week in science, we began our new unit of Earth and Space Science. We are starting with the idea that some events on earth occur quickly, while others occur slowly. We started at the slow end and started talking about how mountains are formed. We watched this amazing video of how the Himalayan Mountains were formed over 70 million years, but over the course of only a couple of minutes.
For this investigation, each student was given a small Milky Way candy bar. I had cut a small break down the middle of each candy bar and the students had to pull the candy bar apart, but not break it. Then the students had to use their thumb and their index finger and squish the two "land-forms" back together and they were able to see how mountains are formed as the earth's crust pushes two pieces of land together.
Mountain #1
Mountain #2
Mountain #3
Mountain #4
And of course... it is near impossible to use Milky Way candy bars for such a cool investigation and not eat them. So after much anticipation from the students they were able to eat their "mountains." It was quite interesting to hear the students' observations that all of their mountains turned out differently, whether it was due to different hand pressure, different candy bar surfaces, or even different amounts of speed.
One of the things that I did not mention from before break was working on code.org. As part of Computer Science week, the kids were able to participate in all sorts of coding activities online. While we certainly had varying levels of being able to code, each of the students were able to write some lines of code and feel successful.
Starting code.org before break was the perfect lead into today's afternoon activity of using Google CS First. This is also a coding activity (that I had tried last year and loved), but goes a little more in depth about telling a story with what you create. Through the Google CS First activities, the students will use scratch.mit to build stories and characters that they can move and command at the touch of a key. Being the first day, it was a bit rough but I think with some perseverance on everybody's parts, we will be able to make it through and feel like we are successful coding (beginning) programmers.
What a week it has been! Welcome back and here is to more wonderful learning!
P.S. In other news, some of you may have heard some interesting news from your students. I am pregnant and did tell that news to the class earlier this week. I am not due until the middle of summer, and just in case some of you were concerned.... I am most definitely finishing out this school year with this class. (I will also be back in the fall to teach a new set of 2nd graders.) As you can imagine, my family is very excited about this addition.
