DIORAMAS!

Last week was a short week, but an exciting one! Then again every week is exciting when we learn new things!

FIRST off, this week we have officially reached our

100th Day of school!!!

Wednesday was the 100th day of schools and we celebrated being 100 days smarter!

Next, we have been learning ALL about landforms. We have tied in what we learned about weathering and erosion and how it is connected to how landforms are made. After we did a very general introduction of each of the landforms, students were put into groups of 3, and set off to learn more about one particular landform. After students did research on their landform, they then began to plan out their dioramas.  The students worked hard with their groups to create their dioramas, label and write their facts, and then they presented their dioramas and facts to the rest of the class. The students then took notes on each landform from the new information their classmates taught them.

Here are some pictures of the students working hard on their creating:

Here are the groups with their finished products!:

PLAINS:

MOUNTAINS:

VALLEY:

ISLAND:

PENINSULAS:

The students loved being able to teach each other all about their landform!

Have a wonderful week!

Math and Measurment

Hope everyone had a wonderful winter break, and enjoyed any and all holiday and family events! The time flies by, and as much as I loved the R&R I am excited to be back in the classroom with the students, and continuing all the fun and learning we have planned!

Measuring things can be done many different ways. There are also several different units of measurement to use.

In second grade, we are currently learning to measure using meters and centimeters!
We of course started with the basics... what is measuring, and how do we measure? In first grade, students learned how to measure with non-standard units.... like cubes, paperclips, blocks, etc. They were also exposed to using a ruler. However, in second grade we step it up and teach them even more about measuring, and begin to compare measurements.

Last week we learned about meters, students explored what items were taller, shorter, or the same size as a meter. They also worked with word problems comparing meter measurements and used their subtraction skills to determine which item was taller, shorter, longer, wider, etc, and by how much!

This we worked with centimeters. We were able to get much more hands on this week and were able to practice our measuring! We started with using a ruler and measuring lines and different size strings. Then we moved to measuring larger items with a tape measure and recording our results.

Below are some student examples. I provided the students a list of different things around the classroom to measure:


Students then used the app, explain everything, and they took a picture of the object they were measuring, they measured the object, and then labeled the picture with their measurement. At first, some students were forgetting to start at the very end of the tape measure, after some reminders, students took off and had a lot of fun working hands on with measuring!

 

Another note:

Just a reminder that I did send home information on Monday about our new Phonics/Spelling structure. This week is a phonics week, so we are working with words that have the <oi> sound and are spelled with oi or oy. There is no spelling homework this week, but please feel free to have students identify any <oi> words while they are reading or doing other homework! Next week we will still be practicing the same phonics skill, but they students will practice their spelling words and have homework.

Check back for more later!

Fast Earth Changes and Some Holiday Spirit!

In science, we continue to learn about Earth changes. We moved from learning about slow earth changes caused by erosion and weather, to the more exciting earth changes, the Natural Disasters!!

Of course when possible we love to make our learning HANDS ON! One way we were able to do that, was with the Natural Disaster portion of our unit. We started off with VOLCANOS! We had 3 different volcanos for the students to view. They all had different heights, widths, and different size openings at the top of the volcano. Students had to make some predictions of which volcano they thought would erupt quicker, which volcano the lava would travel down faster, and which volcano would be the slowest.




The excitement that our students expressed as they watched each volcano erupt was priceless! We even had students record each eruption in time lapse and slow-motion, so that we could look back at them later and compare the volcanos!


Then we moved on to some Water Natural Disasters such as hurricanes, Tsunamis, Severe Thunder Storms and Floods. For this part of the unit, students did their research on a natural disaster of their choice. They then created was is called a Telegami. This is an app on their iPad that allows them to create a character, insert a background, then record a short report. Here are some pictures of their telegamis:



Here is an example to view:

Then this week, we moved in Earthquakes! We first learned all about earthquakes. We then released it to the students. Their task was to create a structure out of 20 marshmallows and 20 toothpicks that could with stand an earthquake. The way we simulated an earthquake was with a tray of JELLO! We shook the tray and created an earthquake to see if their structure would survive. Students then were able to take their structure back and try to make improvements to see if they could make a strong structure to survive the earthquake!

Last but not least, amongst all of this fantastic learning going on within our room, we took a little time here and there to participate in our DEC the DOOR contest that was presented by the Student Council. We looked over several different door decoration ideas and as a class we decided to do a combination of a present, Santa's list, and include home made reindeer, Santas, and Elves!

We of course had to add in a silly face one too!

Can't believe how fast time is flying by!! We still have 5 days next week of jammed pack learning before we leave for the holidays!

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.

JA and Turkey Writing!

Junior Achievement from West Leyden High School

Today we were lucky enough to have Junior Achievement volunteers come to our classroom and teach us all about our community and some business.

We had two West Leyden High School students join our classroom from 9:10 this morning until about 1:15. They started off teaching us all about our community, jobs within our community, and how jobs help us earn money. Below are some pictures learning about the different jobs available to people!

Students also participated in an "assembly line". They worked with their group to make donuts to sell! The students learned about the importance of getting the job right in order to make money for what they made if they made it the correct way.

The students really enjoyed having other students from our community come and and teach them new valuable things. This was a great introduction to our community unit we have coming up in third quarter! A huge Thank You to the West Leyden Junior Achievement volunteers for all of their hard work!

Turkey Descriptive Writing

Another great activity we did this week, was students were able to create their very own turkey. They had full control over how they wanted it to look, and created it entirely themselves. Then, after they created their turkey, they had to use their best descriptive writing to describe their turkey. Then today, we hung up each of our turkeys next to a number without names. Students then came up, read their writing piece, and other students had to guess which turkey was their based on their descriptive writing. The students had so much fun making and sharing their turkeys! This was such a fun activity to get students writing and being creative!

This is such a great time of the year, and I hope everyone enjoys their time off and uses it to relax and reflect on all we have to be thankful for. I am so thankful to have each of these students in my class!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! See everyone on Monday, November 30th!