This week students designed and began creating their extreme weather event diorama. They started by determining the type of community their scene would represent - urban, suburban, or rural. They then began creating their community scene. Next, students used their problem solving and critical thinking skills to devise a way for their extreme weather event to actually "move" through the community. Take a look at our second grade weather detectives in action!
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Due to the unexpected snow day, I was only able to see my sensational second graders for our Weather Detectives unit. This week we examined extreme weather events - tornadoes, floods, droughts, and lightning! Students worked in pairs to research one of these events. Their goal was to find out (1) What is it? (2) How does it occur? and (3) Interesting Facts.
Now that the information has been gathered, students will be responsible for creating a diorama showing the effects of their extreme weather event on a community. Each diorama should provide a visual representation of a community (rural, urban, or suburban). In addition, their extreme weather event should literally be able to move through the community! Students will then pair their diorama with their research and present their projects to their classmates. This week we had a sudden change in plans, and for part of our math time together we worked collaboratively with the students in the compacted math 5/6 class to learn a fun new math game called Albert's Insomnia! In this fun game, students use combinations of numbers and operations to create value starting at 1 and going as high as possible! The math 5/6 students were familiar with the game and used their knowledge and skills to help teach the second graders. I loved all of the team work and problem solving I heard and witnessed as I circulated around the room. What a great bunch of mathematicians!
After our math 5/6 friends left, we continued our algebra adventures! Students worked to determine the value of sea creatures based on their arrangement in a grid and considering the following criteria: 1. The same sea creature have the same value. 2. Different sea creatures have different values. 3. No sea creature has a value of "0". 4. The number at the end of each row and column is the sum of the sea creatures in the row or column. As students uncovered the value of each creature, we discussed the process they used to determine this answer and explored how this would be written mathematically. The focus this week was modeling our thinking mathematically - not just determining the value of a sea creature. We will continue to adventure the next time we are together for math. There will be no gifted reading enrichment this week due to Mrs. Owen attending a conference. This week we put our detective skills to good use as we dove deeper "Into the Unknown" in math and learned about 4 types of clouds during our "Weather Detectives" unit. This week in math, students were challenged with finding the value of "sea creature variables" when given two equations. They had to use their understanding of addition facts as well as their understanding of the relationship between unknowns and numbers in order find the value of each sea creature variable. Students did a great job discussing with their Math Mates the process they followed to find the values for each sea creature! Way to go Diving Detectives! This week we continued our study of weather by learning about 4 different types of clouds and how they can help us predict the weather. After gathering our weather data for the day using the weather station atop of CHES, we then learned about cumulus, cumulonimbus, stratus, and cirrus clouds. Students learned how to identify each type of cloud and the kind of weather that can be predicted when we see these clouds in the sky. Next, students made cloud posters to help them remember this key information!
Finally, we examined the profile of another suspect in the case of McGhee's missing weather data - Ima Vapor! We've added her to our pool of suspects and will be examining key evidence along the way to see if she is culprit in this case! |
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November 2017
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