Pippi and Play Day

This has been a great week to spark our imaginations! Tuesday we rode the bus to Stoneham to see the story of Pippi Longstocking come to life on stage. She has such an adventurous spirit and spunky personality. The cast were students in grades four through eight.

We drew our favorite parts from the play on a pair of stockings when we returned.

Tech free Pippi was great inspiration for using creativity and imagination to engage our minds during GLOBAL PLAY DAY. This day of play offered opportunities for decision making, cooperation and problem solving in an atmosphere of relaxed fun.

Pokemon battles, knee hockey and the beauty salon were among the favorite activities of the day!

Mrs. C. showed a few students the basic of knitting and made a couple of doll scarves.

Play continued the next day when we visited our kindergarten book buddies. It was fun to explore their classroom with them!

Have you played today?

 

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A visit from Helen Keller

To support our current study of biographies, we welcomed a talented actress, Sheryl Faye back to Shaker Lane to portray the life of Helen Keller. Our generous PTA has sponsored this event for our second graders for the last few years.

In class we read Helen's story in our Journeys Book.

It was amazing to see the story come to life!

We were entranced learning about Helen's challenges and achievements.

Ms. Faye's presentation included the contributions of Alexander Graham Bell and Annie Sullivan. We read about them in class too!

We learned how to sign a few letters and words.

On our way out we had an opportunity to see and feel a book typed in Braille.

Thank you Sheryl Faye and PTA!

 

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Learning about animal habits

This week we started a new science unit. We're studying how animals survive the winter by hibernating, migrating or adapting to their environments.

To research we used links from our second grade science site. We love our Chromebooks!

This poster was inspired by a book we read in class. It shows animals that adapt to the winter weather.

We even took a quiz to find out if we would be a migrator or hibernator if we were an animal.

What would you be?

 

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Happy New Year

We've started the new year by making

resolutions for 2016.

Our class resolution is to:

It's our bright idea for the new year. We worked in groups to make posters of what respect looked and sounded like in our class, at recess, in specials, etc.

We set personal goals too.

Wish us luck in meeting our goals!

 

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Social Studies and Science

Seek and you will find! Our class has been deep in research as we explore the cultures of our ancestors. Second graders are always amazed to discover their family roots. This is a great way to learn about geography and customs around the world.

In the story we learned that there are modern day pilgrims who move to new countries to live freely. We continue to talk about immigration and accepting and celebrating differences. At morning meeting, we're learning to greet each other in different languages.

The ancestor dolls came out great! Thank you to Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Mac for helping out!

Today we enjoyed a visit from Jupiter Judy. She works for a company called High Touch High Tech. One of our science units is about plants. We'll study about them more in the spring. Today we learned how plants pull water up through their roots (capillary action) and how plants make food (chlorophyll) we even learned about a plant's baby, (embryo).

 

 

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Combining Curriculum

We've been combining curriculum and mixing media. As part of our geography study, students learn to read and create maps. The maps are 2D and 3D and the mediums are low and high tech. They did a wonderful job constructing miniature models of their bedrooms. To tie in scale and perspective, the students wrote a fantasy story using their models as a setting.

The students learned a new reading strategy this week called, TEXT CODING. This involves responding to the text either while reading or after reading with codes on small post-it notes. The purpose is to focus the reader, help him or her to make more meaningful connections to the text and drive follow up discussions about the story. Students have practiced coding both fiction and non-fiction texts.

Our reading skill this week was identifying the main idea. We read Super Storms by Seymour Simon in our Journeys Book.

Using two apps on the iPad, Drawing Pad and Book Creator, we're making easy reader eBook versions of Super Storms to share with our Kindergarten Book Buddies. These versions will highlight the main idea of each page.

 

 

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Happy Halloween

ENTER IF YOU DARE...

It was hard to keep our enthusiasm under wraps until the parade but we had some fun writing and reading spooky stories during the day.

We transformed into a pretty motley crew!

Thanks to all the parents who made donations to our party. It was a BOOtiful display.

 

 

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