Data, Graphing, and Science Investigations

I will start by apologizing for not getting a post up last week.  The end of the week hit and I somehow ran out of time, so I told myself I would do it Sunday evening and then that didn't happen either.  So this post, hopefully shouldn't be too long, but will cover the last two weeks in the classroom.
We finished up our Graphing and Data unit in math.  For our culminating project the students created group graphs based on their own surveys.  We had many that asked about favorite movies and we also had a couple groups that asked about other favorites.  The process involved the students creating a survey and then asking that survey among each of the class members and collecting the data.  Then as a group they created a bar graph to represent their data.  The students worked very hard on these and it was quite exciting to see the results.

Surveying the class

The finished products --- all 6 bar graphs

In science, we finished off the investigations involving erosion.  The students were given a tower of sand and they had to create a device to prevent water AND wind erosion.  Each group did not have much to work with.... one piece of string, some foil, one coffee filter, a piece of mesh cloth, 4 large popsicle sticks, and 2 small popsicle sticks.  

After the structures were built, each group was given an eye dropper with water to be the "rain," and each student was given a plastic straw to be the "wind."  Once all of the "erosion" was complete, we removed the structures and the students made observations in their science notebooks about how much of a change occurred between the two types of erosion to their sand tower.

For this current week I don't have near as many pictures as I thought, but we did quite a bit in the classroom this week.  Our new unit in math is focusing on numbers to 1,000 and we have been writing these numbers in expanded notation, word form, and representing them using blocks, sticks, and cubes.  The students have also been working on projects in our Google CS-First curriculum.  We were able to complete activity 3 today using the scratch.mit.edu platform.  It is incredible to think that February is almost half-way done.  The coming weeks we will be doing a lot in the classroom.  

As a side note, a permission slip was sent home this week for our walking field trip to the Kelseyville Post Office.  These permission slips are due on Feb. 23rd.  Also the trip itself is on Thursday, March 9th, which is a minimum day.  The permission slip says we will arrive back at the school at 1pm, but that is not correct.  We will be back to the school by 12pm, so that students will still be dismissed at 12:20.  A note is going home about this on Monday.  So sorry for any confusion this may have caused.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Will the Wind Blow?

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!

Have a great weekend!

Am I seeing double?

This week in math our focus was on doubles in addition and subtraction.  Our main question was "What does it mean to double a number?"  On Monday the students did some doubles work and then used the Double Cootie Catcher to explore more with doubles.  They were also introduced to some fun videos on doubles.  Check out this video that seemed to be the most popular in the class.

 

On Tuesday the class got to play Doubles Concentration.  It really had some of the kids thinking about addition problems and their answers.  If the first card they found was 5+5, then the match they were looking for was 10.  It seemed to be a fun game for the students, and I think they really know their doubles facts now.

The class made mini Doubles Facts books.  The students had to write in the equations for each picture and the answer.  Then of course, we had to decorate them.

On Thursday of this week, the kids picked cards and had to determine if the problem was a doubles problem or a doubles + 1 problem (or near doubles).  Once the students had solved the double, solving the doubles + 1 (or near doubles) problem was very easy because it was the original      answer  + 1.

Tuesday was the first time that students who turned in a coupon for Lunch with me were able to redeem them.  We had a nice group of three students (not all wanted to be in the picture) and it was really fun to have lunch with a few kids from the class. 

Throughout this last week, we also had students who turned in a coupon to pick a GoNoodle activity for the whole class.  I am definitely starting to see the more popular choices among the students.  Some of the students have been asking if they can color in some of our champs from GoNoodle, so here is a link to the Coloring Pages if they want to get a little creative.  This is just something they can do for fun, if they choose.

We also had a student turn in a coupon to share a story with the class.  It was very exciting to hear a fellow student read to us.  We heard "Green Eggs and Ham" by Dr. Seuss.

Today, the class was introduced to a new website, called Moby Max.  Here the students can do work in any subject.  Today we focused as using it as a math tool.  The class got very excited when they found out they could earn badges AND game time for answering questions correctly.  We will be visiting this site 2-3 times each week, during different periods of the day.  If for some reason your student wants to try some of this at home, please e-mail me at rcrook@kvusd.org or message me on Class Dojo and I will get you their username and password for the site.

A huge thank-you to all of the parents of Room 106.  I was able to meet with everyone for Parent-Teacher conferences during this week.  It was so great to meet everyone and get to know how we can work together to help the children.

What a Busy Bee week...

First of all, I apologize for not getting this posted sooner.  The weekend managed to slip away from me. Our last week in class was certainly busy, but there was a lot of learning going on.

In Math: We focused on using the strategy of counting on a timeline and counting back on a timeline can be useful strategies in solving addition and subtraction problems.  We used a variety of materials, including beans, bumblebees, honeypots, and beehives.

 

Counting on beans ---- 5 in the bag + 5 on the table is 10 beans total

We also figured out the simplicity of subtracting zero and subtracting all of a given group.  The class used paper tubes to create equations and then check themselves on whether they should subtract all of that number or zero in order to get the given difference.

In Writing:  This last week we focused on writing descriptive pieces.  The students were each given a partner and a Lego piece.  The partners had to write about their Lego pieces in a descriptive way, as if the others in the room had never seen their Lego piece.  We had some very unique pieces, not just your average Lego brick.

And how could I possibly get out the Legos and not let the kids play at least for a few minutes?!?!  After the kids finished their partner descriptive writing, they were allowed to play with the Legos.  We have quite a set of builders and innovators in this group.

 

In Science: We have been focusing on different properties of different objects.  This last week, we took that one step further and used our knowledge of different properties to determine how different tools might be used.  With the tools being from multiple rooms from my own house, including the kitchen, the garage, and the sewing area, the students saw a variety of tools and how they could be put to use.  The students recorded their observations in their science journals and even drew pictures of the different tools that we were researching.

Our tools ---- do you know the use for all of these tools?

(Shown from left to right: vice grip, seam ripper, magnetic pole, avocado slicer, needle threader, apple corer, pastry blender, and bottle/can opener)

In Technology:  We began our Friday technology session with an "unplugged activity."  I pretended I was a robot that needed directions to avoid other obstacles.  The students had to "code" me and give me directions that a computer or robot would understand.  After our unplugged activity, the students had a chance to try a little bit of code and programming on their Chromebooks.  We used kodable.com and we were introduced to the Fuzzies as each of the various codes were written.  These second graders did great with programming the Fuzzies to do what they wanted them to do.

It was such a great week!  Hopefully this week, I can get the blog post up sooner.  Enjoy your week!

*Reminder: This week is Parent-Teacher Conferences.  Students are dismissed at 12:20 pm Tuesday, October 4th - Friday, October 7th.  I look forward to meeting with everyone throughout this week.*