Cause and Effect/Sequencing Through History

 

Over the past few weeks the students have been learning about timelines, biographies, and cause and effect.  Together we have read about many famous Americans and identified their greatest contributions to our society. In addition, we explored how life would be different today if these people had never lived. The following are some activities that the students participated in:

 

-Reading/Researching famous Americans

-Sequencing important events in their life on the Smart Board and with Cards

-Having group discussions/debates on the why these people were important and how life would be different without them

-Demonstrating some of the important influences that they have had (we turned off all of the lights and tried to do our schoolwork without any electricity)

-Writing essays on famous Americans and why they are well known

- Completing a home project where the students created a timeline about their own life (this is my favorite!)

Adkins' Party Rockers

Congratulations to all of our amazing 2nd graders as they performed tonight in the 5th season of JBE So You Think You Can Dance. They all did an awesome job! The singing, dancing, and speaking made it a show to remember!

 

 

The crew!!!

 

And our fantastic judge..."Lariah Carey!"



Learning About Life Cycles

 

Over the past few weeks the kids have been learning about the life cycles of plants and animals. Together they have built their background knowledge, researched specific plants and animals, and wrote reports on a life cycle of their choice. Here are a couple of snapshots of the kids hard at work!

Literacy Week!

We kicked off Literacy Week this year by surprising the kids Monday morning looking wacky in our character costumes. The kids loved seeing us like this and it got them excited for some of the week's upcoming events.

 

 

We paired up with a kindergarten class and got to bring some of our favorite books to read to the kids. It was such a great surprise to hear the kindergarteners reading to us too!

 

 

Mrs. Homan took a break from her busy job at the county office to read one of her favorite books, Verdi, to our class. The kids really enjoyed the fun plot and colorful illustrations.

We even took the time to mix a little math with our reading. The kids voted on their favorite genre and we created a class bar graph with our data. 

Holiday Fun!

 

Although we do work A LOT in second grade, it's always great to have some time for just plain fun! Here are a couple of pics of the way we celebrated our last week of school in 2013.

 

We started out with a snowman breakfast. I decorated all of the tables and desks to "transform" the room after the kids left on Thursday.  When they came in Friday morning they were very excited. They got to decorate their pancakes will all sorts of sugary goodness before digging in!

 

 

 

 

Next, we had some winter centers.  The kids really enjoyed playing Pin the Nose on the Snowman! Thank you Mrs. Fields for helping out with this one!

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, we had a good old-fashioned Florida snowball fight...that is with toilet paper of course! The kids each got a roll of tp and a partner. They had to make one person into a snowman by using the whole roll of paper. When everyone was wrapped up, their partners ripped it apart and everyone made "snowballs" and got to throw them around the room. Such fun!!

We ended the day watching Christmas movies in our PJ's, exchanging books, and opening our special Christmas bags. I know I loved watching the looks on the kids faces and I'm pretty sure they enjoyed it too! Merry Christmas everyone!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Math Stations!

Teachers are always looking for new ways to improve/adapt what they naturally do in their classrooms. Luckily at JBE we are given lots of different opportunities to participate in professional development. The most recent PD that I have joined is one focusing on implementing stations (centers) into the math block. Although I have always used math centers as part of my normal routine, I have picked up some wonderful organizing techniques as well as a refreshing sense of "you can do this" lol :)

Step one was reorganizing my math board. This is what the final product looks like.  It is actually a drip pan from Discount Auto Parts that I covered with fabric to make a cute magnetic board. The student's station numbers are glued on and their names are on magnets so they can be easily manipulated. 

 

Step two was putting all of the math stations I was already doing into one centralized spot. I changed out what was originally in this bookcase in order to house the centers. Inside of each lid I hot glued Velcro directions explaining my expectations for the center. The directions allow students to have something to reference when they are playing the game and the Velcro allows me to change out the directions easily when I rotate centers.  In addition, I placed a topic card on the top of each tub. The card has the skill the students will be working on printed on the top and a dry erase circle in the center for me to write the name of the game.

 

 

Step three was allowing the students to play! They loved having the choice of which station they got to go to and which partner they wanted to work with. Everyone was engaged and on task. Although the stations covered basic review material they allowed for the additional spiral practice needed to reinforce skills.

 



 

Introducing Informative/Explanatory Writing!

We have recently shifted to teaching informative/explanatory writing. This simply means that while we are busy reading nonfiction we are going to also be writing about what we are learning. Informative/explanatory (the old expository) writing does just what it sounds like...provides the reader with information. Luckily JBE is a fantastic school that is constantly providing professional development so that all of its teachers can stay up to date with the current shifts in education. Here are a couple of ideas that I got from a recent Core Connections training.

To begin, I showed the students an example essay about Halloween (that is around the time we started our unit).  I wrote each part of the essay on large strips of paper, cut them up, and passed them out to students. Together, we worked to "build" the essay by putting it back in order. The nifty part was that as we "built" the essay the students sized themselves for importance. For example, our focus statement, or "King of the Essay," stood on a chair because he was the most important and told what the entire essay was about. Next, I had my first main idea stand beside him and the two details that supported the main idea kneel . We continued building this way with our second and third main ideas and details. Finally, I had my conclusion statement, or "Queen of the Essay," stand on a chair at the end of the line because she restated the focus statement and therefor also summed up the entire essay.

Here are some pics of us building the essay...I didn't have a panoramic camera so I couldn't capture the whole thing in one shot but I'm sure you get the idea ;)

 

 

Although answers can vary, the following is the minimum expectation for an informative/explanatory essay in 2nd grade:

Focus Statement

Main Idea

Supporting Detail

Supporting Detail

Main Idea

Supporting Detail

Supporting Detail

Main Idea

Supporting Detail

Supporting Detail

Conclusion Statement

 

From there, we took what we were learning and tied it to text. With the new common core standards almost everything is text dependent. Students MUST be able to go back into a passage and pull out the important information and then summarize it into the above format.

 

We looked at an essay about Woodpeckers. The students discussed the different text features (as a review) that were found in the article. We then read the article discussing how the author had structured, or organized, the text.

 

 

Finally, I passed out bags of sentence strips, dry erase markers, and cut out details (from the text of course!). The students worked with a partner to determine what the main ideas in the article were (using the sub headings) and then wrote them onto their sentence strips. Once they had completed that, they read each detail and placed it below the main idea that it supported. This allowed me to see who could pick out the main ideas and who was able to recognize which details truly showed support and which did not belong (this was acceleration for our upcoming unit on identifying the main idea in a nonfiction text). Here is what the final product looked like...