Welcome Back from Break!

Welcome back from Spring Break!  As I mentioned to the class the other day, we are now in the last trimester (3 months) of the school year.  Some of the students had a hard time believing that they were that close to 3rd grade.  As second grade is coming closer to an end, we still remain the very busy, Busy Bees.

This week our writing has been focused on some of the components of Digital Citizenship.  Each student had to choose one component of Digital Citizenship and explain why it is the most important piece to them.  The class chose from Digital Footprint, Privacy and Security, Internet Safety, Communication, and Creative Credit since these are the main elements that we have been focusing on throughout the school year.  We were able to put together some class books that talk about the different elements of Digital Citizenship.  Some of these written papers will be used for our culminating project on Digital Citizenship that we will be filming in just a couple of weeks.

In math this week, we began to work on learning about two-digit subtraction.  So far, it seems to be a skill that many of the students are enjoying being able to try out.  We have played a couple of subtraction games this week, including the "Pirate Sunken Treasure" game that the students played with a partner. 

Also, in math this week the class was introduced to a new website called prodigygame.com  The students are very excited about this site because the kids answer math questions while they "battle" against wizards and monsters, with quests that they can complete along the way.  

This was probably the highlight of the week for many of the students.

For P.E. this week. we took advantage of the bright sun.  The students were in groups of three and had to create a shadow shape and then the other groups had to make that same shaped shadow.  This was a great opportunity for the students to figure out where they should stand in relation to the sun and how they could move their bodies to mimic the shapes being shown.  Eventually, we combined a few of the groups and the kids had an even bigger shadow shape to match.

Heart

The letter Q

Propeller

Larger group

Larger Group

To end the week, we started an exciting and new thing for STEAM.  The whole class is now part of the Google CS-First Club.  This club stands for Computer Science- First.  In this club, the students get to create a project each week using Visual Programming Interface coding.  This week the students created a project using the site scratch.mit.edu and it's main character the "scratch cat."  This was very exciting as many students were able to program the cat to do something, whether it was talk, walk, run, or meow.  At the end of our club session we were able to have a showcase and view some of the students' work.  As we continue with the Google CS-First club, the students will be able to get  a stronger grasp on what coding looks like and what they can actually have the computer programmed to do.  If nothing else, the students were able to collaborate and gain ideas, tips, and advice from their own classmates.

scratch.mit.edu

Some collaboration in action

This was a great week and a great way to come back from spring break!  

Coming soon.... information on the field trip to Fort Bragg (ocean).  

Quick FYI: The date for the field trip is Tuesday, May 31st.  If you are planning on attending as a chaperon, please make sure you have a recent cleared TB test and have filled out the volunteer packet through the office.