Eagle Observation

As part of our unit on non-fiction writing, yesterday we began an observation on eagles. Berry College in Rome, GA has a webcam set up on a family of real eagles, including two babies that hatched about 6 weeks ago.  Yesterday, we observed the eagles for about 25 minutes, taking careful notes about the behaviors we observed. Our scientific notes also included questions we have about the eagles.  We will continue to observe and take notes each day, as well as do some research on eagles, and finally conclude with non-fiction writing about what we have learned.  Below is the link in case you are interested or your children would like to check on the eagles over the weekend!   There are a few different camera views to choose from on the left hand side of the page.

http://www.berry.edu/eaglecam/

Read Alouds

One part of our literacy approach that is sometimes overlooked is the importance of read alouds.  Second graders are not too old to be read to!  They benefit from it in many ways, and it is a shared class experience that all the children enjoy. Reading aloud is great time to focus on story comprehension, including themes, predictions, characters, and setting.  We are currently reading "The Children of the Noisy Village" written by Astrid Lindgren (who also wrote Pippi Longstocking).  Ms. Risberg (Elsa's mom) originally told me about this story.  Coincidentally, our wonderful Music teacher Mrs. Ryan kindly checked out the book for us while we were in the midst of our International Night study.  We were in the middle of reading Pippi at that time, but it has now been a lovely way to extend our  exploration of Sweden. The children (and I) have truly been enjoying the charming and sweet simplicity of this book. In today's chapter, one of the character finds a "krona" on the ground, and the children were very excited that they knew what a krona was!  One child then asked how much a krona would be equivalent to in US currency, so we looked it up and found that currently one krona is worth about 12 cents: an opportunity for a math connection as well!

Engineering!

Yesterday we were fortunate to be paid a visit by a few of the UM Society of Women Engineers.  They facilitated a group project for the students to use several materials in order to create vehicles powered by magnets. The children worked hard in teams, designing, constructing, testing, making alterations, and finally presenting to the class.  It was a great science activity, and also a great team building activity!

Dissecting Seeds

The children have begun learning about plants in Science class with Mrs. Brennan.  The first activity involved dissecting seeds.  Students were looking for the embryo, seed coat, and stored food.  They then recorded their findings in their science journals.

Non-Fiction Magazine Style Articles

Last week we reviewed the purposes and authors use non-fiction writing for, and the various formats they may take.  We each wrote our own "magazine-style" article, choosing one of the three topics that we brainstormed earlier in the week.  The magazine pages shown below are taken from a National Geographic Explorer magazine, which the children used as a model. (One major topics, with a few subheadings within the article.)

Crazy Hair Day!

Non-Fiction Writing, Geography and Math Games

 This week we continued our non-fiction writing exploration by coming up with topics that WE ourselves know a lot about. We will use these to write "magazine style" articles. Later in the year, we will do research-based non-fiction writing.  I began with the following "telling" brain frame about topics I know a good amount about. Then the students went off and created their own topic brainstorming frames.  This was the first step.

NEXT, we gathered back, shared our topics, and talked about the second step.  I asked the children to choose three of the topics that they think they know the MOST about, or have had the most experience with.  We each created our own "categorizing" brain frame with these three topics, with three or four sub-headings under each topic, about the types of info/details we might write about.  Our next step will be to pick one of these three topics to begin writing about!

In Social Studies we are moving on to learning about the following geographical land forms:

We also pulled up a map of the Huron River to see how long we could follow it along, through several cities!

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This week we learned a new game called "Two-fisted Penny".  It is a great way to practice both multiples of 10 and 20 (we played both ways).  Very easy to play at home with 10 or 20 pennies-- ask your child how to play!  

Automaticity of both compliments of 10 and 20 are extremely important for second graders!

ex. 3+7 = 10

4 + 6 = 10

12 + 8 = 20

15 + 5 = 20

Snowy Icy Fun!