This week, we continued our exploration of animal communities. Students were fired up after visiting the San Diego Safari Park! To further develop our observations, we began animal research using books and National Geographic magazines. Students chose to study Ocean Animal Communities, Safari Animal Communities, Creepy Crawly Animal Communities (lizards, insects, bats), or Warm and Fuzzy Animal Communities (polar bears, penguins, wolves).
As I've said before, this class is a group of passionate readers. They were eager to take notes during their research and share their findings with other classmates. I'm eager to work with them as they continue to learn more! Highlights from this week:
Little did students know, I had the opportunity to visit Birch Aquarium for the first time last March while I was visiting San Diego for my HTeNC interview. Ms. Jones invited me to the 1st grade exhibition. Seeing how excited your children were to present their learning to the public (including me) sold me on HTeNC. I consider myself incredibly lucky to be their teacher this year!
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Important Reminders:
This week we spent much our time launching our first project! Throughout this project, we will be studying animal communities. After researching how animals take care of each other within groups, we will transfer that knowledge in order to use it in creating classroom and school norms. There will be more about our project on the current project page soon. To launch our project, we went on a classroom scavenger hunt to gather clues that explained our project. To earn each clue (written by our classroom friends Oscar and Bob Duncan), we had to work together to perform an activity or complete a challenge much like animals do. We had a wonderful time! I noticed children persevering when it became challenging to work together. At the end of the day, we had to work together to unscramble the clues to learn more about our project. You can find those clues posted on our classroom wall, along with our fierce wonderings and ongoing research. More highlights from the week:
Here are some of the highlights from our week:
- "I am..." tiles: This beginning-of-the-year project helps us recognize our identities as individuals and learners, as well as the beautiful community we create together. We started by listing characteristics that make us special. They chose one characteristic that was most meaningful to them and created their first draft of their "I am" tile. After the critique process (see below), students completed their second and final draft of their tiles. They were so excited to "hide" them in their favorite place in the room for Back-to-School Night. Soon the tiles will be displayed near the entrance of our room. - Critique: Our "I am" tile project also acts as a launch to the critique process. I was excited to see that the students have a fabulous foundational understanding for the drafting and critique process from their experiences in first grade! If you would like to learn more about our Critique Protocol, please check the Resources page. - Edit and Revise: We introduced the concept of editing and revising our work (particularly our writing). First, the students helped me make a checklist of the key elements our writing should include. Next, we learned a song to help us remember the purpose of the editing and revising: "Edit and revise! Edit and revise! We make our work better to get ready for public eyes!" This week in Work on Writing, we will focus on choosing one piece of writing in our journals to edit and revise. - Class jobs: Students applied for one of our 20 class jobs. In their job application, students indicate which job they want, and why they believe they are a good fit for the job. They will keep these jobs for the month of September, then apply for new jobs each month. - Back to School Night: Thank you, thank you, thank you to those who were able to come! It was a pleasure talking with you. Students were ecstatic to read the notes you left. - War: I introduced the classic card game this week as a way of talking about "greater than" and "less than." Students played with partners using traditional decks, then moved on to play with numbers 1-100. If you have a deck of cards at home, I encourage you to try it with your child (I take the face cards out to make it less confusing).
- Human Number Line: During "Movement" Monday afternoon, the second grade team created a human number line! After working with a partner to make their own number line from paper in class, each student in second grade received a number (1-60) and the challenge to line up in order as quickly as possible. Students communicated with each other to get in groups by 10s, then organized themselves into a number line in only 5 minutes and 35 seconds! - Number Talks: We started "Number Talks" this week in which students are given a number (we've started with single digit numbers and will work up) to express on the dry-erase walls. There are no limitations - students used pictures, number sentences, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and even picture/number sentence combinations! It is an engaging way to get students thinking about numbers in different ways. - Marshmallow Challenge: On Friday, students worked as teams at their tables to build structures out of marshmallows, straws, and toothpicks. Their challenge: to build the tallest structure. Each team took a different approach, and more importantly, were able to communicate their approach and reasoning to the class at the end. We made a BIG mess, had lots of fun, and still managed to clean up in time for lunch! |
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This is your place to find important information and my place to show off the wonderful things our students are learning and doing. Archives
June 2016
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