Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Time to Read Biographies

59734382_640We 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. 

In Math today the students just went over the subtracting 7 facts from 7-7 to 18-7. The students once again used the Math Wrap-ups to practice their subtraction. Overall math didn't take too long today other than finishing their fact worksheets as well as some problems about time and rounding. A few of their math problems today involved regrouping with subtraction, which I now feel most of the students understand and can do well on.
The rest of the day in english, the students read more facts about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We also as a whole class worked on answering some comparative questions about the two Presidents. The second graders learned how to use a chart to find information and record the information into a graph. We also worked with different names to address George Washington as such as "Mr. Washington", "General Washington" and "he" (pronoun). The students will use what they completed today to help them write their upcoming biographies for the February bulletin board.
Since today went by rather quickly, the students had to stay in a bit for afternoon recess to finish up some of the math and reading. I was very proud of the students for working so hard to complete all the assignments they had due today. It was a lot of work to do in one day, but most of the second graders were able to complete what needed to be done. Tomorrow brings yet another biography and some really cool estimation activities in math. Till then, have a wonderful night!
-Laura Hill

No comments:

Post a Comment