Week of February 14 – 18, 2011

Our week was bracketed by celebrations with Valentine’s Day on Monday and our 100th day of school on Friday. In Reading Workshop we continued to focus on making connections with books and how books can remind us of other books. In Writing Workshop we used a rubric to make sure we included all of the important elements for a How-To book. We have been playing more games to practice our addition and subtraction facts and had fun with “Quick Images” in math. In Social Studies we continued to enjoy learning about American Heroes with a focus on Abe Lincoln and President’s Day.

Valentine’s Day

We incorporated Valentines into our curriculum throughout the day. In math, we each got a box of candy conversation hearts and sorted them and graphed how many of each color and how many in all. Then, we graphed everyone’s in the classroom together. For reading and writing we decorated our valentines bags, made valentines for each other and our families and read lots of “lovely” books. We also had fun with a word search that included all of our names! We had a great party in the afternoon, thanks to some creative and fun-loving parents. We made more valentine decorations, decorated cookies and played a BINGO game that was all about love! We LOVED it!!

Abraham Lincoln Reader’s Theater

We learned about Abraham Lincoln this week in Social Studies. A highlight of our week was watching some of our classmates perform a short play about his life. We learned that in Reader’s Theater, the costumes and props are minimal and you don’t have to memorize your lines!

Hooray for the 100th Day!

We did hundreds of things to celebrate the 100th day of school. We counted our collections of 100s of things that we brought from home that included marshmallows, jelly beans, legos, puzzle pieces and pasta. We even counted the hundreds of stripes that Ms. Runkle wore! We made 100s of decorations and glasses to wear. In the afternoon, we went to all of the other first and second grade classrooms for more fun activities. In our classroom, students estimated how many licks it takes to eat a popsicle. The licks ranged from 12 to 930!

Weeks of January 24 – February 11, 2011

We wrapped up a lot of units in the past few weeks and started some new ones as you will see below. We had an unexpected break with two snow days and were happy when the groundhog did not see his shadow so we will have an early spring. (We are counting on that!) We enjoyed learning about Chinese New Year and writing lots of poetry.

Poetry Publishing Party

It is always fun to have parents and other friends come to the classroom to hear what we have been writing about. This time we read our poetry.

Tops and Mobiles!

We completed our science unit on balance and motion by devising our own spinning tops, investigating the vibrations of rubber bands and exploring balance scales and making mobiles. We discovered that the more weight on the bottom of the straw made our tops spin longer. Also, by cutting the straw shorter we were able to spin our tops longer. It was fun to explore vibrations by using paper towel rolls and aluminum foil and hearing the different sounds we could make by blowing in the tubes. Also, stretching rubber bands across the geoboards in different configurations taught us that as we stretched the rubber band longer, the sound it would make when we strummed it got higher. Balancing index cards on straws with rubber bands and paper clips was trickier than we thought!

Measuring Around the Room

We wrapped up our math unit on measurement by measuring each other with tape measurers and realized that our body parts are all about the same size. We also measured tapes on the floor using our own steps, baby steps and basketball steps (size 14!) We learned that all of the measurements were correct even though they were different numbers. We also learned that the longer the measuring tool, the shorter the number and vice versa.

Writing How-To Books

We began a unit on non-fiction writing in Writing Workshop. We have been writing books that can teach the reader how to do something like how to draw a tree or play hockey or play the guitar. We each chose one of our books and read it to our writing partner to make sure we included all of the steps. It was fun to learn how to do new things. We have lots of experts in the classroom on a variety of skills!

Amaryllis Update

Our amaryllis bloomed with four beautiful red flowers. We were amazed and excited to discover that we have another bud growing and about to bloom. We have also been measuring it as it grows. We discovered that both flowers grew at the same rate: about one inch per day.

Mystery Readers

Our last two Mystery Readers managed to surprise us all! They both brought family favorites which turned out to be favorites in the classroom as well!