Voting, Pies, and so much more!

We had a very busy week!! We started off our week with the students getting to vote in the Presidential election. I talked to students about the importance of voting and gave them information about both candidates.

President Obama won with over 500 votes!! This was an amazing experience for students. Thank you to the election team that set it up.

After all the election excitement, it was time for the math learning lab. Mr.Tash was here this week and all the k,1,2 teachers got to come into my classroom to watch my mathematicians at work! The students did great. Everyone was very impressed and I was one proud teacher. :) 

We have also been talking about author's purpose this week. To help us remember that author's persuade, inform, and entertain, we made "pies". The students had to find examples of each from books in the classroom. Then they got to decorate their pie and make it whatever "flavor" they pleased. They really loved this activity and I can see them grasping author's purpose in shared and small group reading. 

Next week we finish up our Wild West unit. Have a great weekend! 

Back to the West we go!!

Today we started off the week learning about African American cowboys in the West. Of course, we all dressed in character. After talking to our own classes about the importance of the person we were portraying, we rotated classes so that all classes could learn about each person. 

We have been practicing using different voices for characters and reading plays. Last week Mrs.Overton came to visit dressed as the Princess from Princess and the Frog. A couple students got to read parts as she acted out. We love when Mrs.O comes to visit!! 

 

Fun in Fairy Tales

Today we started our Fairy Tale unit. We all got into character by dressing up as a character from one of our favorite stories. The students loved seeing all us of dressed up and it helped them connect to the stories. 

**Make sure to read the newsletter I sent home today! I updated our schedule and classroom routine. **

In math today, we we learning about greater than and less than. We even made a conjecture! One student said that if the number in the tens place is greater, than that number is always bigger.  In order to prove that it is always true, we worked out several problems. 

Wild West Week 2

We have had a very busy week!! We started off our week learning about Native American (Indians). After reading a story and looking at pictures, students were able to distinguish the differences between Native Americans and cowboys. We look at the clothing, housing, and different lifestyles within their culture. Today I used an image by George Catlin to have the students use adjectives to describe the clothing. They did an awesome job and came up with great adjectives!

In writing, we wrote about all the things we have learned in the past two weeks. I was so impressed with the students illustrations and the knowledge they have retained in the past two weeks.

Sorry it is not big enough to read!! Come visit our classroom to see all the writing selections!!

Then finally, in math we are still trying to figure out the missing part. Students took a math assessment today and they did very well.

Welcome to the Wild West!

Today we started our Wild West 6 week unit. All the second grade teachers dressed up in our cowgirl outfits. Students saw pictures from the Wild West in the 1800's and we talked about how they used wagons for transportation instead of cars like today. We started out the unit by reading a tall tale called "Pecos Bill". All week we will be talking about and reading tall tales. Our Vocabulary words are: interrupted, promised, wander, borrowed, and mumbled.

We also had a structured math talk. I posed a problem with a missing part. Students had to use different strategies to find the missing part. We talked about using subtraction, using addition facts that we already know, and using the part part whole method.

Change is a good thing!

We now have five new students in our classroom. We are so happy to have them join the fun! We also got desks today instead of tables. A lot of changes, but we are all adjusting and beginning to settle in.

Math Learning Lab

Our classroom has the opportunity to be the math learning lab this year. This is a very exciting opportunity for the students. They did awesome on our first lab day! Mr.Tash is the best practices trainer for math and he worked with the students on using mental math to solve addition and subtraction. He also talked about making problems easier by applying your prior knowledge. If you know your doubles facts, you can can easily solve a doubles plus 1 problem.( 2+2=4. 2+3=5)
In best practices, we do not TELL the kids what they are learning. The kids discover their learning through exploration and reasoning. We always have to make sense of the math and justify why the answer is correct or why our method works. The students are learning how to have group discussions about math. They can agree and disagree with one another as well as help each other out when they are confused. I am so excited about how much my students are going to grow this year in math!!