King Cobras, Komodo Dragons, and Gila Monsters.....OH MY!!!

Last week in Reading, we read our first expository text, All About Reptiles. The students REALLY enjoyed learning about all of these different reptiles, their habitats, and how they catch their prey. But most of all, they enjoyed the visit from our friendly reptiles, Lucy and Spike! 

 

After her cranberry and orange peel breakfast, here's Lucy checking out our compound word match-up! =)

In our Social Living unit, we've been learning about landforms and bodies of water. Here's one of our DINO-mite landform pictures representing some of what we learned. 

Light, Sound, and a Special Visitor :)

My second graders have been some VERY busy bees lately from creating double-bubble maps, to tracing shadows, to even creating their very own eardrums! Yes, you heard me right! Mrs. Goins came for a visit last week and taught a lesson on sound and had the students construct a set of eardrums to learn about the vibrations that allow us to hear things. They also experimented with a variety of instruments to explore pitch and volume. The students had a GREAT time experimenting with this science kit! 
THANK YOU, Mrs. Goins!!!!

I had the students compare and contrast two forms of energy that we learned about: light and sound. We created a double-bubble map to show the similarities and differences between the two.

We also discussed how shadows are formed when an object blocks light, so we went outside to experiment with our own shadows. 

Fun with Food for Place Value

Last week, we started our place value unit in Math. Students have been learning to represent 3-digit numbers in different ways....expanded form, number words, digit and value, and picture representations. Today we used some fun foods to represent our numbers by using crackers, pretzels, and fruit loops. 

We also made scarecrow glyphs to tell about ourselves and our families.

Batty Over Singapore Math

It's hard to believe we're already 2 weeks into the 2nd nine weeks! Time sure flies when you're having fun! My second graders have been very busy with solving and creating math story problems. We've used Singapore Math model drawings to solve and explain our work with some of our Halloween word problems. 

We've also been working on comparison story problems, using stickers and pretzels to represent our comparisons.

"Tee-riffic" Summers and Me on the Map

We had lots of fun creating our Me on the Map projects. Students sometimes have a difficult time remembering which is the city, state, country, continent, etc. After making their booklets, they had a much better understanding of where they are in the world.

Our class surely had a Tee-riffic summer. Students decorated their tees and wrote sentences about how they spent their summer vacation! 

Meet & Greet

WOW!!! We had a great turnout for tonight's Meet & Greet! From what I can tell, I will be starting my 7th year of teaching with an AWESOME group of students and very supportive parents! Thanks to all the parents & grandparents that came tonight. Stay tuned for updates and news as we swing into another great year in second grade! 

Here are a few pictures of our classroom this year...

Hershey Mountains, Toothpaste Rivers, and Playdough Hills.....Oh My!!!

I must say that my students LOVED our landform diorama activity! In our Social Studies unit, we learned about a variety of landforms and bodies of water that can be found across our planet. We used materials such as playdough, Hershey Kisses, brown sugar, and toothpaste to represent each of these landforms.

Butterfly Life Cycle

After learning about the butterfly life cycle, students used beans and pasta to represent the different stages of the life cycle.

Our Bat-tastic Writings

In our reading class last week, we read an expository text called Squeaking Bats. Students learned lots of interseting facts about these fascinating mammals. For Adventures in Writing, the students organized the information they learned about bats into a tree map to help create their writings. After completing their work, the students traced their hands and feet to create their very own bat!

Tree Map



Chasing Chickens for a Cure

Last week, BES students raised $877 for the "Chase a Chicken Race!" Over the past few weeks, students brought in money to place in their teachers' buckets to raise money for the American Cancer Society. The teachers with the most money had to chase a chicken at the end of the week. The kids had a BLAST watching us go after our chickens!

After our chicken race, first and second grade students stuck around to watch our Diet Coke & Mentos eruption experiment.