Basketball and Pizza Shop Goodness

What an exciting week it was at Briggsdale this week. The whole school was getting pumped up for the high school girls as they made their way to the regional championship in basketball. Many of the second graders were really excited about the pep rally we had on Thursday this week. The students were also very excited about a new fraction game I found called Tony's Pizza Shop. It is an interactive game we played together to help the students understand fraction simplification and also mixed number relationships. The game can be found in my games page of the website if you wish to play the game at home with your student. So speaking of fractions, that is the portion of the unit we discussed in math this week. The students had a really hard time with mixed numbers the first day they were taught them. I had them working as tables using pattern blocks to find a whole (hexagon shape) and its parts (triangle, parallelogram and trapezoid). After the Pizza Shop game the next day though, the students practically had it mastered. I am very proud of them for working so hard to understand the math this week as it can be a bit tricky.


A Curve in the River lead us off in reading this week as we discovered the joy of writing a letter in a bottle. The students read through the story and we discussed why someone might want to do something like that. I think we could even do an activity later in the year where we write a letter and put it in a bottle as well. The other story the students read this week was called Slippery Siblings. It was about a brother and sister team who loved bobsledding. It discussed how Blaize, the young boy was blind but was still able to steer the bobsled by counting. The students then had to write a paragraph about the sequence of events in the story. They created some excellent paragraphs using the algorithm of Main Idea-Details-Conclusion.

We finally completed the Mayflower portion of the Pilgrims unit this week by summing up the voyage. The students were able to take yet another interactive tour of the ships course and also discussed what happened to the ship. Since there were storms at sea, the Mayflower was actually pushed too far north so it landed in Cape Cod Massachusetts instead of landing in Virginia like they originally intended. The students were also able to go outside and simulate the ship by measuring its length, width and height as well as rock the boat.We talked about how it must have felt, mainly about being sick. It was an interesting week indeed and next week should be even more interesting as we begin to discuss what happened to the Pilgrims after they landed.

Have a wonderful weekend and good luck to the ladies at Regionals!
-Laura Hill