Being Detectives

Our new reading strategy is inferencing, which means we are learning how to take clues left by the author and combine them with what we know in our schema to figure something out.  To make this strategy concrete and hands on, we've been doing some detective work in our classroom!

First, the Superheroes of Supercity needed our help!  Mean Max was going to destroy the city if the superheroes couldn't get to him in time!  Students had to use clues left by Mean Max to figure out where to send the superheroes!  We were able to save the city!

Students also got to investigate ME!  Going through my purse, they used the objects I pulled out and what they know about me and the object to figure out why I had that object and what it says about me.  I'm a crafty Girls on the Run coach who loves running, hates getting sick, and drives a car!

Research, research, research!

We've been doing a lot of research in our classroom lately!  Our reading skills have improved so much this year!  We're ready to start using our decoding and comprehension strategies to learn new information!

We started by researching our presidents.  Students read an information card about each president and  filled in a bubble map with interesting facts.

After conquering paper-and-pencil research, we took our learning to the computer!  We used Scholastic's Underground Railroad website to learn more about the hardships of slavery.

Happy 100th Day of Second Grade!

We're 100 days smarter!

We celebrated our 100th day in style!

Our day started with a 100th day treat.

Everyone created gorgeous 100th day projects!

We also wrote about ourselves at 100 years old (class consensus is that we're going to be gray-haired, walk with canes, and tell long stories to the neighborhood kids).  In the afternoon, the three second grade classes rotated through all 3 classes for different 100-themed activities.  In Miss Knapp's classroom we sorted, counted, and graphed 100 Skittles.  In Mr. Murphy's classroom we built towers with 100 plastic cups.  In our classroom, we did different activities for 100 seconds (push ups, writing word wall words, subtraction facts, connecting cubes, stacking cubes, jumping jacks, and reading sight words).  We learned that 100 seconds is longer than we thought it was!

Happy 100th day!  Only 76 left until we're 3rd graders!

Ringing in 2015!

Woohoo... a five-day week!  We got so much learning accomplished this week!  Take a look to see how we've started 2015 in Camp Second Grade!

We're learning how to make connections to help us have a deeper understanding of the texts we read.  We kicked off this unit by free associating with words.  After reading a word or short phrase, students drew or wrote the first thing that popped into their heads.

In math, we have perfected 2-digit subtraction.  This is really hard - it's hard to remember to borrow when the bigger number isn't on top.  We practiced this skill by playing a Scoot game - students "scoot" around the room to answer as many problems as they can in a given time.

We are learning about landforms in science.  We're visiting famous landforms all over the world to learn more about them.  We're creating a passport containing all of the places we've learned about.  First up was the volcano Mt. Saint Helens.  Did you know it once erupted for over 3 years straight?!

Veteran's Day

We had the day off, but we celebrated a little early in our classroom.  For homework last week, students and their families made a list of family members and close friends that have served or are serving in the military.  We then made a graph to honor our veterans.

Red Ribbon Festivities

We had a wonderful Red Ribbon Week!  Everyone pledged to stay drug free and healthy their whole life through!

Frankly, we have better things to do instead of drugs!

All decked out in red for Red Ribbon Week!