Important Dates:
Wednesday, January 25 - Book-It Theater - Going Some Place Special Thursday, January 26 - Author Visit - Javaka Steptoe Wednesday, February 1 - End of Semester - No school Monday or Wednesday 6 or 8 - Museum of Flight Tuesday, February 14 - Valentine's Celebration Wednesday, February 15 - Airplane Extravaganza - Evening time TBA Monday, February 20 - Presidents' Day - No School Tuesday - Friday, February 21-24 - No School Hi families, I ended this week thinking about reflection and making time for reflection throughout the day. On Thursday, I went to my STAR mentor training through the Seattle district, and one of the ways students engage in learning is through reflection. Often times we get so busy in our day that we miss this reflection piece. When we rush, we can eliminate examining what we learned and how well we learned it. However, moving forward with all that is happening in the larger world outside of school (politics, budgets, families, friends), reflecting on why we make certain decisions, making sure we have facts to support our decisions, and how other people respond to these decisions is a major part of becoming a responsible member of the community. In class, as a community, we will continue to emphasize the importance of reflection for its many benefits. Math Subtraction! We are practicing our subtraction strategies, drawing connections between subtraction and addition and organizing our work on the page. Writing Students continue storytelling. We focused on different elements of a story (introduction, problem, climax (solution) and the ending (the "new" normal). We also thought about different ways students could end their stories. Reading We examined characters' motivations and hidden lessons the author wants to teach within the story. Students keep track of their stories as they read on post-it notes, helping them retell at the end of the story.
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Important dates: Monday, January 16 - MLK Jr. Day - No school Wednesday, February 1 - End of Semester - No school Monday or Wednesday 6 or 8 - Museum of Flight Tuesday, February 14 - Valentine's Celebration Wednesday, February 15 - Airplane Extravaganza - Evening time TBA Hi families, Mercer Slough Mercer Slough was a hit! We lucked out with the weather. It rained for about 20 minutes at the beginning and then stopped enough for us to enjoy the swamp and forest habitats provided by the Slough. Students had a lab session exploring forest and swamp decomposers (worms, beetles and other invertebrates). and a field session in which they searched looked for them and other swamp features (spongy soil, stinky smells and fungus). It was a great outdoor learning experience for students as a refresher to our soils unit. Airplanes William the Engineer One of our families has a friend who works at Boeing as a airplane engineer. He came in and talked to us about how an airplane flies. He answered all of our questions ranging from, "Why do they put ducks into the engines (For testing)?" to "Why do they paint the planes white (For heat regulation)?" He finished his talk with a demo from a quadcopter. So cool! Thanks William. If anyone else is or knows someone in the "airplane field", let us know. We would love to have you in. Writing We looked at how master authors create and start gripping fiction. Producing gripping fiction can be tricky! Students thought about stretching out important moments and starting stories right in the thick of the action. Reading We are looking at character traits by looking at ourselves as character! We also examined how characters change over as a reaction to events in the story. Math We reviewed our addition strategies with math games and took an end of unit test to wrap up addition strategies. Important dates:
Tuesday, January 10 - Field trip to Mercer Slough Friday, January 13 - MKL Jr. Assembly Monday, January 16 - MLK Jr. Day - No school Wednesday, February 1 - End of Semester - No school Wednesday, February 15 - Airplane Extravaganza - Evening time TBA Hi families, It is great to see everyone back this week! I hope everyone had restful breaks (hopefully without getting sick). I had fun in Milwaukee, hanging out with my partner's family and enjoying Lake Michigan. Airplane Project-Based Learning Wednesday we started our first PBL activity of the year. Airplanes! For our kick-off event, students created three different models of airplanes and tested them out, comparing how well the different models flew. We also reflected on our own experiences with airplanes, whether we have flown on them, seen them in the sky, or had fun constructing paper airplanes at home or in school. The rest of the unit will involve looking at the development of flight, how it has afftected our local, national and global communities, and issues associated with air travel. Project-based learning leads students through a process of asking questions, researching, writing and presenting on a real-world issue or topic. Students initially gain general knowledge of the topic through videos, books, newsarticles, speakers, and field trips. Then, after building this knowledge, students start asking their own questions and crafting their own solutions and ideas. Students create presentations to share their knowledge and solutions. Students often work in small groups to complete these projects. In second grade, learning the skills to work with a group is as imporatnt and the academic content. Students will start to learn to delegate, share, build and resolve conflict together. It's an exciting time and we're looking forward to it! Reading We started a second fiction unit: Studying Characters and Their Stories. In this unit we will dive into the lives of the characters and start noticing their motivations, emotions and changes throughout their stories. Writing In conjunction with the fiction reading unit, we have started our third writing unit: Writing Gripping Fiction. This is an exciting unit as students get to apply all of the skills they learned in the Small Moment Narrative unit to their own fictional characters. This is one of the few writing units in elementary school that students will get to take free reign over setting, characters and plot. We are looking forward to it! Math We are practicing different methods for adding 2-digit and 3-digit numbers both in equations and word form. Next week we will move on to subtraction strategies. |
Ms. ThibautOne of the second grade teachers at QAE. Read this blog and stay up-to-date on classroom activities. Archives
March 2017
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Ms. Thibault's 2nd Grade | Class Blog |