Research and Catapults!!

While not many things can top the splendor and whimsy of Willy Wonka Day... today was pretty awesome just the same! We started with math and learned how to add double digit numbers together! We had to play close attention to learn what happens when we write our adding the paper and pencil way, while keeping track of every time we "carry" tens into the tens column! After some practice, we tried some on our own! The quicker and easier you are with your math facts (fluency) the easier it is to learn and remember how to add and subtract numbers when they get bigger! We also celebrated our nonfiction writing unit with our animal research posters! Students read copies of books related to their topic, and became the expert on that animal! By sharing our learning, everyone learned a lot more about many animals, not just the animal they researched! We learned about extinct animals, wild animals, mammals, birds, reptiles, and MORE! After a little practice, each friend brought their poster to the front of the room and shared their learning! We were all quite surprised by many of the "fun facts", and life span of many of our animals! Awesome day friends! More research soon, but next time we will work in friends on a group project! Woohoo! This afternoon was pretty spectacular, and I am not exaggerating!! As we make our way through our catapult experiments, we must also remember to write about our thinking... like a scientist! Much of today was spent testing our catapults and writing details about our procedure! We actually had two procedures to write too! How to build the actual catapult, and then how to launch the ping pong balls and cotton balls! Using detail, labels, bullets and expert words helped the reader understand our process! Thanks to mentor author Robert today, for letting us take a close look at his lab report and inspire great scientific writing! More with catapults tomorrow!!!

Willy Wonka Day and Lab Reports!!

What happens after a second grade class finishes reading one of the best Roald Dahl full of adventures about a chocolate factory, Oompaloompas, 4 naughty children and one sweet wonderful boy? Why you get Willy Wonka Day... all day... in second grade! And it all started with our chocolate river in math!! Oh, no... not that chocolate river, that's Ms. B.! Along with some other characters posing as teachers.... heh, heh! Our chocolate river was full of all different kinds of chocolate data that we needed to sort, classify, and transfer onto our chocolate river bar graphs. We paid close attention to making our graphs neat, then used the data on the graph to answer some sweet, chocolatey questions!! When math starts in a chocolate river, you know it's going to be interesting! Our next adventure was the quest for our own golden tickets! That journey started with a scavenger hunt full of clues... leading to more clues... leading to yet more clues, which lead us to Nurse Jeannie and our Wonka bars!! Each, completed with a golden ticket for every second grader! Wow!! After that adventure, it was time for Grandpa Joe's math meeting! Well done Grandpa Joe... AKA Ben! Finally, it was time for every character's close up!! First up, all our Charlie Bucket's... the hero in our story! Next up, our one and only Veruca Salt, who I'm glad to say, is NOTHING like our sweet lovely Stephanie! Then it was time for our gum chewing Violets! We also had a number of Mike TVs today... along with Grandpa Joe! Finally, to round out our character profiles, we had the magnificent Mr. Willy Wonka!! And, let's not forget about our orange skinned, green haired friend, the hard working Ommpaloompa! Willy Wonka Day isn't just for kids, the teachers got into character too! Golden tickets, Wonka bars and chocolate rivers round out the group today! Last, this afternoon, it was all about nonfiction writing and new lab reports! Our new question and procedure will begin with catapults! That's right, today our task was to create a question that we would test using the scientific writing process... starting with building our very own catapults! And we're just getting started! More with catapults and "procedure writing" tomorrow! Wonka Day... HUGE success! Well done second grade!!

Lab Reports and Meetings!!

Greetings Friends! 2W has been a busy place lately! In math we're learning all about time, how to tell time to 5 minutes, and parts of the clock! We also learned what am and pm mean when talking about time too! Kelsey lead a great math meeting and brought us up to and over 100 days in school! Wow! Tenzin also lead a morning meeting with This Land Is Your Land, and the drum greeting! In reading workshop we are stretching our learning about nonfiction and text features and focusing on what the author is trying to teach us! Taking a close look at what the author did, and how it helps us learn, while paying close attention to the "main idea" of nonfiction text... and supporting details! And we are loving it! Soon we'll celebrate our own nonfiction research writing and become the author ourselves! Writing to teach... writing nonfiction like an expert! Exciting! In writing workshop we are also writing nonfiction courtesy of lab reports! Paying attention (like a scientist) to our "question", our "hypothesis", and next, our "procedure", followed by our "results" and ending with writing about our "conclusion" (what we think about what we observed)!! Wow! We've finished 2 lab reports after posing questions and writing about our trials! Next in writing workshop.... catapults!!! Now that sounds exciting!

Time!

Happy Monday Friends! A busy fun day in 2W as we reviewed telling time to 5 minutes! Remembering parts of the clock, and where the hands go, and what they are telling us is like learning a new language! Ms. Carey taught today's lesson and we quickly broke off into small groups for practice! Well done friends! In reading we read and learned all about gorillas and how they live! One of our most interesting and favorite nonfiction books yet! Everyone loved it! Probably THE MOST exciting thing that happened today was the unexpected news that our smart board was being installed.... TODAY! WOW! We couldn't be more excited, so we camped out in the cafeteria with some spectacular math games (Heads and Tails and I Have, Who Has?)!! Great way to end the day, and I can't wait to see our smart board tomorrow morning!!!

Busy Week!! Take a Peek!!

We've been so busy in 2W learning all about money, and we've just started our new math unit on telling time! We will learn about parts of the clock and how they work, and how to read a clock! We've started with some background knowledge (time to the hour, minute hand, hour hand) and will build on this as the unit progresses! Ms. Carey will begin taking on more large group, direct teaching duties in her second semester, and she started today with a great lesson on telling time on an analog clock. We reviewed parts of the clock, and learned how minutes on the clock are like counting by 5's!! Then we practiced in small groups! In reading we are stretching our learning about nonfiction text and text features, and have learned how to go back into the book and "prove" our thinking! Well done! It was Tenzin's V.I.P. and we sure learned more about this very special student! Friday ended with another second grade sing, and today, we paid tribute to singer songwriter Pete Seeger with many of his incredible songs about freedom and justice! Great Friday friends!! Rest up this weekend and we'll have another great week of learning coming up!