Our Last Week as Second Graders

To celebrate the astounding accomplishments students have made and enjoy our last days as a classroom family, we spent our last week of school having loads of fun!!! We started our week with a fun-filled Field Day and Awards Ceremony to celebrate our academic growth. The rest of the week was filled with pajamas, games, water balloon fights, a carnival and lots of laughs! Enjoy the slideshow of pictures from our week.

We have had an amazing year together and are sad to say goodbye. We hope that everyone enjoys their summer and we can't wait to see you back in the fall as third graders!

If you would like ideas for activities to get ready for third grade over the summer, please visit our Second Grade Parent Wiki that is linked under "Important Links."

Olivia has arrived...

We are pleased to announce the arrival of our newest addition to the Room 214 Farmers...OLIVIA MARIE ROBERTS!!! She was born on Tuesday, May 17th at 7:44 p.m. She was 20 inches long and weighed 7.3 pounds. Mrs. Roberts and the baby are both doing great!!!

Sunshine Math Brawl

Sunshine Math is an optional program run by our PTA that allows students to complete a weekly worksheet to challenge themselves in math. Several of our students completed this additional homework each week. Each year, ten students on the grade level compete in a Math Brawl upon the completion of the Sunshine Math program. We are excited two students in our class qualified to be in the Math Brawl. We are so proud of how they shined as mathematicians at the Brawl. We are also very proud of all our students who were able to complete the Sunshine Math program this year!

Tomie dePaola

We are currently knee deep in our Tomie dePaola Author Study. We are studying his books and have created an attribute chart as a home for our findings for author's craft, noticings, theme, plot, movement through time, genre, and vocabulary. We decided to write Tomie dePaola and today received a letter back from him! The answers to our questions were posted on his blog! You can check it out on his blog under the heading, "The Chets Creek Elementary School Farmers:"
Tomie dePaola's Blog

Kiss A Pig

Thank you to everyone who came to our third nine weeks award ceremony. One of the best parts of our job is seeing how proud students are of their accomplishments. They certainly had a reason to be proud, they have made great gains thus far. As a reward for meeting their reading goal this nine weeks, students went to a picnic lunch on Friday with Principal Phillips and watched her KISS A PIG! Below is a video of the exciting event:


We are looking forward to what the last nine weeks will bring!

Mrs. Robert's Baby Shower

There is still six weeks before Olivia is scheduled to make her appearance, but we are definitely looking forward to it! The students have been anxiously preparing for Mrs. Robert's Baby Shower for several weeks and the day finally arrived Friday. She was definitely surprised to find the classroom and all of our students in pink, black, and zebra print! We started the morning by watching her open our class gift (a book of "mommy advice")and some other presents. Students then participated in baby stations (name the animal babies, making a baby out of playdough, baby pictionary, etc.) to get the full Baby Shower experience. We ended the shower with cake! Thank you to the Skipper family for providing the beautiful zebra themed cake. We had a great day! Thank you to our wonderful students and families for making the day so special! Enjoy the pictures!

Zoo Field Trip

We had a great time at the zoo! In class, we have been looking at informational texts, researching and writing about an animal, and learning about the basic needs of living organisms. The students were habitat experts when they went to the educational class provided by the zoo. Look for our nonfiction reports on our Standards Based Bulletin Board and the student clips located outside our classroom!

Butterflies

We released our butterflies this afternoon into their natural habitat. The students have become butterfly "experts" and were able to answer questions from our Kindergarten observers. Ask your child about their experience and what they have learned!

Life Cycles

What better way to learn about life cycles than to experience it? Two weeks ago we received our caterpillars. Since, we have experienced molting, spinning, and finally the next life cyle stage: the chrysalis. With the help of Mrs. Virata, we transferred all 35 chrysalises into the butterfly net. We will be anxiously awaiting our Painted Lady butterflies!

Informing Others

As part of our Non-Fiction unit, students explored books to recognize non-fiction conventions (labels, captions, index, etc.) as well as learn the difference between a sorted and narrative non-fiction text. Today students participated in a scavenger hunt that allowed them to explore the features of a non-fiction text as well as to help students recognize if they know where to find the features in the book.

One of our Second Grade Writing Standards states that students will be able to communicate big ideas, insights or theories that have been elaborated on or illustrated through facts, details, quotations, statistics and information. To work towards this standard, we have begun researching our topics for report writing. Students have chosen topics that they know little about and are in the process of organizing factual information they have found on their topic. Students will be allowed to search on safe sites such as the ones added to the "Student Links" on the right side of our blog.

*SNAPS*

We ended our Poetry unit by sharing our published pieces at our very own Poetry Cafe. Students sipped on "coffee" (chocolate milk) and shared their poems under a spotlight while their friends celebrated their work through snapping.



Below is a video that highlights a few of our poems:

Untitled from Julia Lewis on Vimeo.

Holiday Play Pictures

Idioms are "a Piece of Cake"

Butterflies in My Stomach and Other School Hazards by Serge Bloch is the story of one boy's experience as he moves through the day on his first day of school. The story is illustrated with idiom expressions. An idiom is an expression used by a specific group of people where the meaning is only understood by common usage (ex: "You woke up on the wrong side of the bed," " "the cat is out of the bag," or "the test was a piece of cake") As a class, we explored idioms and the expressions used in this book. Students had to choose one of the idioms and illustrate the idiom literally and figuratively as well as interpret the meaning.

We are currently in our Poetry unit in Writers Workshop. Students had to take the idiom chosen previously and incorporate it into a poem. Check out our poems on the clips outside our classroom! You can also get a closer look at our idiom work on our Standards Based Bulletin Board this month.

Math Strategies

Most of us grew up with the belief that there was one way to add and one way to subtract large numbers - regrouping. It may seem silly to some that students are now taught several different ways to solve a problem. In order to help students become fluent mathematicians, we now teach mathematics conceptually. This helps students to build an understanding and make connections. At the beginning of the year, we worked hard to build a firm foundation of number sense .

At this point of the year, students should feel more confident with their conceptual strategies and departing from less efficient ways to solve problems (such as tally marks). If you were unable to attend our Parent Math Night, you can download the math strategy sheet on our Second Grade Parent Wiki. There is a link on the right side of the blog and you can search "math strategies" on the wiki.

Changes in Matter

For the past week, we have been exploring changes in matter. We completed A Race For Change lab. Students had to predict what the quickest way to melt an ice cube would be only using themselves. Students then tested their theory and timed the results. Students discovered that applying heat and breaking the ice into smaller pieces melted the fastest.

We also made lava lamps! Here are the instructions to make a lava lamp at home:

1. Fill a bottle 3/4 of the way full with vegetable oil (the cheaper, the better).

2. Fill the bottle the rest of the way full with water.

3. Add ten drops of food coloring.

4. Drop half of an Alka-Seltzer tablet into the bottle and watch it bubble!

In a previous lab, students explored liquids to conclude that water is more dense than oil, causing the water to sink to the bottom and oil to rise to the top. The food coloring mixed with the water, making it easier to view the bubbling when the Alka-Seltzer tablet was placed in the liquid. When the tablet (solid) was placed in the liquid mixture, it caused the solid to change to a gas (carbon dioxide) causing the bubbles to rise and become a "lava lamp."

Persuasive Commercials

To end our unit on persuasive writing, students worked in groups to come up with an idea or product that they could persuade their audience with. Below are the students commercials:

Persuasive Commercials from Julia Lewis on Vimeo.