Pair-of-lells and Love of Lightning

In math this week, we were able to read one of my favorite math books. It was called Sir Cumference  and the Great Knight of Angleland. The book was about a young boy named Radius who went on an adventure with his family medallion. Radius learned about all different types of angles as well as the basic words for them "right", "acute" and "obtuse". The students loved the book and were really able to understand the difference between angles thanks to the rhymes and symbols the book put them with. The main reason why we read the book however, was for its reference to parallel lines. In the book, the two-headed dragon radius fights stretches out its necks to create a bridge. The King of Angleland calls the dragon his "Pair-of-lells". The second graders understood what parallel lines were then, when we went back and did the lesson about parallel lines. It is such a wonderful book and I would suggest any of the Sir Cumference math books to use with your students.

A Carousel Food Web for Unwanted Kings

This week went by fast as we did a lot of review and practice in English. The class finished working with quotation marks and then moved onto review of alphabetical order and capitalization. The students also were able to finish their George Washington biographies they had started a while back. I was very impressed with how much detail some of the students put into their biographies. In reading, we read the story Carousel and discussed how it was related to the other stories in the unit. The students decided that Carousel was like the other stories because in each one, some type of object or food was created. In this story, a young girl received a hand made carousel from her father for her birthday.

Solids, Quotations and the tastiest Jalapeno Bagels

Since I have officially gotten into full day teaching, the grading has become more intense. From now on, I will only be posting what happens in the classroom weekly rather than every day. I start writing just a few things and end up with a huge post each day. Anyways, this week was quite the interesting one. First off in math this week, the students learned all about the geometric solids (cone, cube, sphere, cylinder, rectangular prism, and pyramid). We had a really fun time trying to figure out what kinds of shadows each of the shapes would make depending on which side the light was shown on. The students also learned about measuring using metric units, mainly centimeters. The students were able to understand this concept easily as they already had practice using the inches side of the ruler to measuring lengths of different objects. The last thing they learned in math was how to find the perimeter of an object by measuring and adding up each of the sides. We did an interesting activity where the students had to find the perimeter of their desks, the room and other objects in the room.

Write on His Profile

Since it is starting to snow and my internet is becoming slower, I will write a rather small bit about today's work in the second grade classroom. We began the day as usual and then worked on an aw/au vowel sounds worksheet which had the students completing a word search for spelling vocabulary. This was rather difficult for many of the students as the "aught" portion of many words stumps the students. Daughter, naughty, and caught are just some of the words the students worked with this morning. Most of the day was spent completing the Reading Theme 4 Test and editing/revising our biographies about Abraham Lincoln. Many of the students were able to revise their draft and begin writing their final draft. Since the Lincoln biographies are part of our monthly quit project, the students wrote their final draft on a white profile of Abraham Lincoln (similar to the picture on the right). I was very and I mean very impressed by how hard the students worked to get things done today, especially with their biographies.

How Big is a Foot?

Today was yet another cold day at the school with temperatures around -12 to 6 degrees throughout the day. The students were bundled up and made it safely to school. We began the day as usual with DLR and then the students worked on their spelling packets while I went around the room and answered questions. Today's math lesson was really fun! We learned about how to measure in not only inches but feet as well. I drew a bunch of lines on the board and had the students answer questions about how long each line was in feet and in inches. The students also saw the connection between inches to feet and multiplication, such as 2 feet is 24 inches (12 x 2=24). In their small groups, the students then were asked to measure certain objects around the room and tell me about how long their object was in feet and inches. The students measured the height of the trashcan, length of the bookcase, length of their desks, height of the door and more! Finally to conclude the lesson we lined up 11 rulers on the floor and the students each walked heal to heal beside the rulers to see about how long their "foot" is compared to the 12 inches "foot". 

Estimating and "Honest Abe" Biographies

What a biography filled day! The students have finally begun to write their biographies of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Since our February quilt pieces are of Abraham Lincoln, the students started writing his biography first. We worked really hard today to make sure each of the students had a main idea, at least three details and a conclusion in their biography. Since we have been reading biographies this week in reading, this English writing unit goes along so well. After reading a biography about Theodore Roosevelt in their reading textbooks, the students worked on rewriting a paragraph about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Rather than using the pronoun "he" in every sentence, the students had to look back in their notes and find other names to call Abraham Lincoln and George Washington (such as Honest Abe and General Washington). Then we went from working on that short paragraph to the students writing their own paragraph to get their biographies started. Each of the students turned in their biography and after placing revision marks and highlighting nouns pink I really am very proud of how well their biographies turned out. Many of the students wrote many details about Lincolin's life and placed events in chronological order. 

Time to Read Biographies

We started our biographies unit in reading today and the students read a short biography of Ellen Ochoa in their textbooks called . The second graders learned how she became the first Hispanic woman in space and how her life changed because she followed her dreams. We worked together as a whole class to read the biography and then take some notes about her life. We first went through a quick timeline of her life which included events like her birth, her first space shuttle flight and when she first joined NASA. The students also filled out a list of her accomplishments and why we remember her. We will be reading all kinds of different biographies this week and the students will be able to see how a biography is written. Since we have been working on information about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln over the past few days, the students will be writing a biography about each of them later this week to tie english and social studies into this reading unit. Then next week they will be put into pairs to work on short biographies and create timelines to present to the class. 

Snowy Day Back

Not too much to report for today. Since we missed Friday's class we did a lot of make-up work today as well as finish the Abraham Lincoln biographies. It has been really windy all day with the snow blowing in our faces as we exit the school. We started a very fun graphing activity today about what students will miss most about winter and what they look forward to in spring. Other than make up work and the usual math lessons, today wasn't too exciting.

Although in science we did play a really fun predator vs. prey game that taught the students what happens in live situations with animals. We really got the full experience of living in different climates as we walked through the blowing snow to another building on school grounds to play the game. Since it was so cold, we talked about fur, shelter and big feet as adaptations animals in cold weather environment need. I am hoping the wind stops tonight as I really do not want another snow day tomorrow. The students are going to be starting an exciting timeline biography project tomorrow and I want them to have as much time as possible to work on it. Sorry I did not write more than this today, I am quite tired from grading and the snow on top of an upset stomach leads me to feeling tired and ready for bed!

Till tomorrow, have a wonderful night everyone!

-Laura Hill