We have been rockin' and rolling in second grade these past two weeks. During encore, students finished building their magnetic vehicles and tested them to see if they could carry a load of 10 grams a distance of 1 yard using only magnetism! Several teams were successful with their designs!
During reading / LA, we continued to learn new concepts through fun Halloween read alouds. After reading Room on the Broom, students learned about homophones. They generated a list of homophones they knew and then used 4 different sets of homophones to write sentences. Our discussion of homophones prompted some good discussion on the difference between multiple meaning words and homophones. Ask your child to tell you the difference!
To wrap up our Halloween fun, students spent a couple of days drafting and publishing pumpkin tales! They were given the challenge of writing a Halloween story with a pumpkin as the main character. In the story, they were to use sequencing words, at least one pair of homophones, and at least one onomatopoeia word! There were some creative writing samples that came from this challenge. They are on display in the hallway right now, but look for them to come home soon.
In math, students began studying graphing. Together we looked at the parts of a graph and discussed the importance of each part (title, scale, labels, etc). We practiced reading and interpreting bar graphs and then set out to construct our own 3 dimensional bar graphs! Working in teams of 3, students were given a set of data. They had to sort and organize this data in order to construct their graphs. Students learned how to strategically work together to make sure the data was carefully accounted for and organized. Next, students took their data and began building 3D bar graphs. Using shoe boxes, cardstock, and some clever thinking, students created their labels, determined a scale, and began to build the bars for their bar graphs. We will put finishing touches on these bar graphs and develop three questions for friends to answer using the bar graphs in the coming week.
During reading / LA, we continued to learn new concepts through fun Halloween read alouds. After reading Room on the Broom, students learned about homophones. They generated a list of homophones they knew and then used 4 different sets of homophones to write sentences. Our discussion of homophones prompted some good discussion on the difference between multiple meaning words and homophones. Ask your child to tell you the difference!
To wrap up our Halloween fun, students spent a couple of days drafting and publishing pumpkin tales! They were given the challenge of writing a Halloween story with a pumpkin as the main character. In the story, they were to use sequencing words, at least one pair of homophones, and at least one onomatopoeia word! There were some creative writing samples that came from this challenge. They are on display in the hallway right now, but look for them to come home soon.
In math, students began studying graphing. Together we looked at the parts of a graph and discussed the importance of each part (title, scale, labels, etc). We practiced reading and interpreting bar graphs and then set out to construct our own 3 dimensional bar graphs! Working in teams of 3, students were given a set of data. They had to sort and organize this data in order to construct their graphs. Students learned how to strategically work together to make sure the data was carefully accounted for and organized. Next, students took their data and began building 3D bar graphs. Using shoe boxes, cardstock, and some clever thinking, students created their labels, determined a scale, and began to build the bars for their bar graphs. We will put finishing touches on these bar graphs and develop three questions for friends to answer using the bar graphs in the coming week.