Problem Solving

In math, we have been working on solving addition and subtraction stories that include two digit addition or subtraction.  This is extra tricky, because the problems require reading skills, critical thinking skills (as we decide what kind of math is needed, and what the "unknown" is,) and our math skills!  We know lots of ways to solve two digit addition problems, and are working on learning two digit subtraction problems.  We recorded our thinking in our Math Journals.

Mystery Reader

 Check out our Mystery Reader from today!

Video Games & Technology

 We have been learning about how technology changes over time during our unit on video games.  We spent several weeks learning about past video games, and created several timelines to show how video game consoles, controllers, and graphics have changed over time.  Despite our lack of schema about video games from the old days (and with some important input from parents and even Mrs. Willis,) we were able to explore some key differences between past video game technology and current gaming systems.

Our last timeline explored how graphics have changed over time through Mario, one of the oldest video game characters.

Students noticed many changes in computer graphics.

Mr. Mcmann, a parent from Mrs. Hite's class, came in to share his knowledge of video games on Tuesday.

Next week, we will be looking at where video games might be going in the future.  Stay tuned for some of our predictions- today's second graders could be tomorrow's gaming innovators!

Mystery Readers

Check out our latest Mystery Readers:

Mrs. Minogue 

Mrs. Johnson

Happy Veteran's Day

Happy Veteran's Day from Miss Miller's class! In addition to writing letters to veterans and participating in our Veteran's Day assembly, second grade had the opportunity to video chat with Lcpl. Willis (AKA Miss Miller's fiance) live from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, today!  We asked some great questions about Veteran's Day, life in the military, and what it is like to be a United States Marine.  Thank you to Mr. Willis for taking time out of his day to chat!

Students were able to speak to Lcpl. Willis and hear about life in the military.

We came up with some great questions!

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Big Cheese and Halloween!

Check out our latest Big Cheese, Mrs. Mamula!  She read Halloween stories to us today.

And check out our adorable Halloween costumes.

Big Cheese

Check out our latest Mystery Reader!  We love to have readers in the class, and students are so excited to see people they know walk through those doors.

Earth Buddies

The past few weeks in science have been all about Conservation and Recycling.  We began by building our schema about the two words by looking through books and inferring their meaning.  We learned a lot just by looking through books, a great illustration of how we can teach ourselves!

Then we jigsawed reading books about being Earth Buddies- that means that we split up into pairs and we each read one of the short informational books.  Then we rearranged our groups so that we could share out our learning with students who read different books, combining our knowledge to build up our schemas even more!

We are getting really good at making inferences while reading.  We know that you need your schema and evidence from the text to make an inference, and that good readers infer answers to questions that cannot be found in the text.  Our schema is what we already know about a topic, and we use our schema every time we begin to learn something new, and add to our schema while we learn.  A great book we read to talk about inferring is Seven Blind Mice. 

 Mrs. Parker-Jones came in today to show us how to use some new features on Pixie to prepare us to create our own Earth Buddy Presentations.  

We made our presentations in the production room, and shared them with other students in the school. Let's see if Miss Miller can get our presentation on our blog to share!

EB Fundraiser and Pumpkin Raffle

As you know, we have been working hard to raise money for EB, which affects a student in our classroom.   A child born with Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) has a deficiency of one of several proteins that anchor the skin to the body. One such protein is C7—an important form of collagen. Without enough of these proteins, the skin tears and pulls away from body easily, causing serious wounds and recurrent blistering (www.childrenscancer.org/puck/research.html).   When we heard that there was already a runner in the Columbus Marathon raising money for this cause, we knew we wanted to get involved! 

Our class prepares for our fundraiser!

I am so proud of how hard our class worked to set up this bake sale and pumpkin raffle, start to finish!  We not only came up with the idea, but wrote letters to other classrooms, made announcements to the whole school, donated our baked goods, and even worked at the Bake Sale and Raffle Ticket stand.  The first day alone, our pumpkins drew in over 150 raffle tickets, and we sold as many baked goods!

HTE staff decorated pumpkins for our Pumpkin Raffle

I want to thank our generous families who donated baked goods, our wonderful volunteers who worked at the booths, and our HTE staff who decorated pumpkins for our raffle (and they looked amazing!).  I also want to thank my caring and supportive group of students this year, to whom I credit the success of our fundraiser.

Students from Room 105 worked the Raffle and Bake Sale tables both days!

I am proud to announce that we raised $880.00 for EB.  The proceeds (through PUCK) go to support EB research at being done at the University of Minnesota. The research includes understanding animal models to find what the stem cell population is that makes skin and to figure out how to isolate it from human marrow. Also to do the clinical trials and to rebuild the immune system in children with EB and make blood and skin forming stem cells that are normal from EB patients.  Find out more at www.childrenscancer.org/puck/research.html.

Again, thank you all for your generous support!

Mystery Readers

Check out our most recent Mystery Readers, Mrs. Heather Berger and Mr. Dan Willis.  We love having our families and friends in to read to us!

Mrs. Berger read us a pumpkin story!

Lcpl. Willis shared Miss Miller's favorite book, Ferdinand, with the class.

Exemplars

Each week, we become mathematicians-in-training and explore expert problem solving strategies through our Exemplars.  Exemplars are really tricky math problems, which require math reasoning and thinking, as well as collaboration, to solve.

Each week, we introduce a problem and highlight one of the math strategies that successful mathematicians use to complete difficult tasks.  By the end of the year, we should be adept at using all of these strategies.  The problem solving strategies which we are learning to use, called the Math Practices in our Common Core Math Standards, are:
1. Make sense of the problem, then persevere
2. Use math that makes sense
3. Prove and defend our answers
4. Show our thinking in different ways
5. Use math tools to solve
6.  Explain my thinking using math words
7.  Notice patterns to help solve
8. Use a strategy that you've used before

The practices in blue are ones we have learned and practiced in class so far this year.  The ultimate goal is for students to be comfortable facing challenging mathematical tasks, and have a toolkit of strategies they can fall back on.  They also should be comfortable taking risks in small group settings, sharing their ideas and not focusing only on the "right" answer.  Our focus is on the process, rather than the product.

Check out some great pictures of our class using math tools and patterns to help solve an exemplar called Betty's Blocks.

All About the Atmosphere

The past two weeks in room 105 has been full of learning about the atmosphere!  We have become true scientists, conducting investigations, experiments, and making observations about the world around us. We wanted to prove two things through our investigations:  That the atmosphere is made of air, and that there is water in the air.  Those are two very hard things to prove, because air cannot be seen, and water vapor is also invisible.

We conducted experiments with water bottles, balloons, straws, and even a humidifier to try to prove to ourselves that air is in the atmosphere, and water is in the air.

Below are some pictures from our last experiment involving evaporation:  We made a puddle on the ground, and watched as the water disappeared in front of our eyes!  We remembered the word evaporation, and used it to explain what was happening in our experiment.

We traced our puddles in chalk to help us better see if any changes occurred to it over time.

What do you think we noticed about our puddles?

Next week, we will apply our understanding of the atmosphere and how water changes states when we learn about the water cycle.  Having this background knowledge form our experiments will really enhance our understanding of the atmosphere.  All of this learning fits into our unit on weather!

Author Visit: Sally Derby

We had a special visitor this week to room 105: Sally Derby, Miss Miller's grandmother, an author of children's books!  Mrs. Derby spoke to us about how authors think of ideas, write stories, and get their stories published.  It was a treat to have Mrs. Derby in, and we are hoping she can come back and work with us later in the year too!

Sally Derby taught us all about how writers think, work, and plan.

Our students help Mrs. Derby demonstrate the publishing process.

We were so thrilled to have Mrs. Derby here, and she shared with us one of her books that has not even been published yet! Talk about a sneak peek!

For more information about Mrs. Derby and her books, take a look at her website:  http://sallyderby.com/

Spelling & Word Study

Our first spelling lists came home today!  Our words, which are different for every student, are taken from one of two high frequency word assessments, so each is very individualized and targeted towards only words which students struggle spelling.  Tests are Friday.  Any missed words go back on our list next week, so we should really get these second grade words down!

The individualized spelling tests are different from last year, so here' s a quick breakdown:

• Lists go home Monday, and are tested on Friday.  Short weeks vary, but often we will not have spelling lists or tests on a short week.
• We still do word study during the week, but study spelling patterns (for example, long a spelling patterns) to aid students in attempting to spell new words.  Students are not "tested" on typical spelling pattern words, but are expected to apply these rules in writing when possible.
• Students are expected to spell high frequency words correctly in writing by the end of the year, but only to apply common spelling strategies for unknown words.  So, for example, if a student writes "amayzing" in their writing rather than "amazing" I would find that acceptable: they applied a long a spelling pattern that could be appropriate, and the word has all sounds represented.
• High Frequency words are not only used more often, but also tend to have irregular spelling, which is why we are focusing on those for home lists.  There will be little, if any, spelling practice on these words at school, outside of Writing Workshop, during which spelling is one of many writing focuses.

We are well on our way to becoming great spellers in second grade!  Thank you to our wonderful volunteers who have been helping to assess students who did well on their first 100 words and are ready for their second list.  

Big Cheese

We kicked off our first Big Cheese of the year!  Take a look at our Big Cheese sharing her book with the class on Tuesday.  On Monday, she shared her poster with us, on Wednesday, she shared two objects, and on Friday, she will bring in her favorite snack to share with us!  We are so excited to start Big Cheese!

Our Big Cheese did a great job of reading her favorite book, and Anansi tale, to our class!

Wonderful Weather

We are learning all about weather in science!  We began our weather study this week by activating our prior knowledge about weather in a quickwrite.  We shared our ideas and were able to gain an understanding of what we already know about weather.

Next, we explored some wonderful fiction books about weather.  Often, fictional stories are great places to begin our learning, as they often include facts!  We read A Boat Ride with Lillian Two Blossom, a story by Patricia Polacco, and discussed both weather myths and weather misconceptions.

Our Big Idea for weather in second grade is: The sun, air, and water work together to create our weather.  This will be along unit which will culminate in a project focusing on conserving water and other resources, including a look at bottled water (you may know, one of my "favorite" topics!)

I am so impressed by what we already know about weather, and can't wait to see how much this class learns in the next few weeks!

Our Writing Goals

We are kicking of four Writing Workshop after meeting with Miss Miller one on one and looking at writing samples together.  We decided what our Writing Goal is- what we need to work on in our writing- and put our name next to that goal on our Writing Goals Chart.  As you can see, we all have something we can work on to improve our writing.  This visual reminder will help us keep on track working towards our Writing Goals.

Currently, we are working on writing basics, such
as using finger spaces, capital letters, and periods.
Some of us are ready to look at our spelling using
our individual word walls, which we keep in our
Writing folders.

What is your writing goal?

We have some wonderful writers in our class, and I can't wait to show off their work at our first Publishing Celebration, after we complete our Small Moments writing projects.   Stay tuned for more information about that!

Hundred Grid Clues

Today we practiced using our Hundred Grids in class to solve addition and subtraction problems.  We realized that when you add or subtract one, you move to the left or the right.  When you add or subtract ten, you move up or down the column.

We used these rules to play Hundred Grid Clues together.  This would be an easy game to play with each other at home too!

We took turns giving clues one the hundred grid.

Hundred grid clue prompts.

Math Fact Practice

This week in math we began focusing on learning addition facts.  As second graders, we are responsible for mastering our basic addition facts (up through 20).  This means that we should be able to answer them within 3 seconds.  The goal is to have them memorized have a trick to figure them out very quickly.  

To make mastering these facts more interesting, we have been learning games to help us practice.  Ask your child to teach you how to play Domino Pull, Plus One/Plus Two Go Fish, Beat the Calculator, or Plus One/Plus Two Concentration at home!

This week we are focusing only on our plus one, plus two facts.  Check out our class in action!

Domino Pull is a game where students flip over a domino from a pile.
If they flip over a plus one or plus two fact, they get to keep it,
and write the addition sentence on their board.

Writing addition sentences is another important skill this
game practices.

Students loved playing this- and it helped us learn our facts.

Week 2

Week two of second grade was a wonderful week!  We have been doing some important learning about Hoffman Trail's Core Virtues- Respect, Responsibility, Honesty, Compassion, Self-Discipline, Perseverance, and Giving.  See more about our core virtues here: http://hte.hilliardschools.org/virtues/.

Another focus of our week was familiarizing ourselves with rubrics, which we can use throughout the year to rate our own work.  Using a rubric sets students up for success by letting them know what is expected of them.  We practiced creating and using rubrics to assess our second grade behaviors during different times in our day.

This week we also learned all about Morning Jobs- work stations students begin when they arrive at school.  Morning Jobs allow students to practice second grade skills while making the transition from "social" time to "school" time.  Take a look at some Morning Jobs in action.

One of our morning jobs when students arrive is spelling.  At this center,
students spell our their words with scrabble tiles, and then add up the
values of the tiles to find a value for the word.

At this morning job station, students make as many
words as they can.

The First Week of Second Grade

Welcome to Room 105's blog!  I am so excited to be sharing with families all the wonderful learning we are doing in second grade.  Our first week has gone without a hitch!  Our learning focus this week was how we function as a class in second grade.  We are spending a lot of time building a sense of community in our room, discussing rules and behavior standards, and getting to know each other.  

We spent some time on Wednesday getting to know students from
other classes in second grade with a buddy search activity!

I can already tell that we have a wonderful group of kids this year.  I feel that I have been able to bond with this group more quickly than with any group in the past!  I have such an enthusiastic group this year- but I have noticed that that enthusiasm translates to lots of chatter!  We will plan to spend the next few weeks easing into academics while placing a huge emphasis on practicing appropriate behaviors and helping our days run smoothly so meaningful learning can take place this year.  Any discussions at home along these lines would be appreciated.

This will be my main method for letting families know about all of the wonderful learning that is taking place in our classroom.  I would like to update the blog at least once per week, although there will be times where that is an overly optimistic goal.  Your patience is appreciated, and I will always catch up on missed weeks.

It is going to be a great year in room 105!  Thank you for your involvement, and for sharing your children with me this year!