Monday, November 21, 2016

Mini-Mayflower Challenge

Today we spent the entire day working on a Thanksgiving STEAM Challenge. We began the day with building our background knowledge about who the Pilgrims were and how they came to be on the Mayflower ship. We had a lengthy discussion about what it must have been like for the Pilgrims to take such a long journey, as well as what they would have needed/ been able to bring with them.

Next, we shifted gears a bit and thought about what the word Capacity means.  We tied this knowledge back to the Mayflower's capacity to carry the Pilgrims across the ocean, and the fact that over 100 Pilgrims and sailors were on the Mayflower traveling for about 9 weeks. This lead to a great discussion about how a ship's structure impacts the ship's ability to float and carry heavy loads.

At this point students were presented with the challenge of creating a ship in small groups, that would have the largest capacity and still function properly to get the Pilgrims across the ocean. Of course there were constraints on materials and time, so each group had to work as a team and create the best ship possible with what they had. It was a great day and every group was successful in creating a ship that had a capacity to hold over 100 pennies!

All of the groups will be presenting their designs and discussing what went well, what was challenging, and what they would do differently next time tomorrow morning!


Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Homework & Habits of work...

I just wanted to give parents a heads up that if you look under the Parent Resources tab on this blog, you will find the links for our Reading Homework Questions and the Habits of Work "I can..." statements.

As always don't hesitate to contact me through email or by phone if you have any questions!

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Insects are Interesting!!

Over the past couple of weeks we have been learning about insect life cycles! It has been fascinating finding out about the changes that these creatures go through during metamorphosis.

To go along with this learning, we have been lucky enough to get real live Ladybug larvae and caterpillars!!

Also, we received a letter from Eddie the Entomologist, and he is going to be checking back in on our learning with Mystery Bug Letters! Eddie will give us clues about the bugs that he is studying and we will try to guess which insect he is describing. As we learn more about insects, we will be adding the bugs to our own "bug jar".

Here is a peek at what we have been seeing!












Monday, October 3, 2016

Library Learning FUN!

Mrs. Elwell shared a wonderful read aloud with our class to kick off our Second Grade year in Library! She was also so kind as to spend a few hours of her own time walking the beach and collecting perfect painting rocks for us to make an artistic connection to the story.


Here is how it went for us all!! 





Daily 5: Building Stamina with Read to Self and Read to Someone

The kiddos have been working hard to build up their reading stamina through reading to self and reading to someone. We spent a full week discussing what our room should look, sound and feel like when we are all working to read independently or reading with a buddy. Each day we have been practicing those expectations, and we are getting better everyday!!


Thursday, September 29, 2016

Math Explorations

As we work to establish the structure of our math workshop model, students have been spending time working with a variety of math tools. Some of our explorations have been with Geo-blocks, Linking Cubes, Pattern Blocks and Inch Tiles. Check out what we've been building!





Hopes & Dreams to Create Classroom Rules

Each year we begin to get to know one another through learning about each child's Hopes and Dreams for the school year. We use these hopes and dreams to help frame what our classroom should Look, Sound & Feel like in order for those hopes and dreams to be accomplished. Here's a peek at what that has looked like in our classroom!




Saturday, August 27, 2016

Hello and welcome to the 2016-2017 school year!
Over the course of this school year we will be doing a great deal of learning and growing together in our classroom and beyond. This blog will be our window into the "Stupendous" things that we will be doing and learning about each week. It is my hope that we will create many posts, with a plethora of photographs and captions, to show and tell about all of our experiences in Second Grade!

I know that we all thrive on feedback, so please feel free to add comments and questions for the kids to reflect on and respond to!