The wonderful world of writing!

We've done a lot of different writing so far this year! We started off just trying to get our students interested in the writing process (brainstorming, rough draft, editing, final copy), so we focused on creative writing.  We read the story "Where the Wild Things Are" as a class, and then had the students write their own "Wild Thing" story, in which they changed to fit their interests and experiences. . . Needless to say, they were very creative and very funny! Here's a picture of the start of the bulletin board.

Then we moved on to our poetry unit. In this unit, we study all different types of poetry, by reading some famous pieces and some silly ones (Shel Silverstein).  The children have really been enjoying this and have proven to be excellent poets in the making! For Halloween we wrote Cinquain poems about spiders. Here's a look at those. . .

Most recently, we have been working our haiku poems, which you saw in the previous post about the moon.  We also let the children write a haiku poem about anything they wanted (remembering that haikus are always about nature, and have to stick to the "5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable" format) It's a lot to ask, and as always, they impressed us with their skills!

 

We are taking a break from our poetry unit now (we will go back later on in the year), and are moving on to "How Tos".  This is an important part of the writing process, because it helps students with their organization within their writing.  By giving step by step directions, they make sure to include all details, ensuring they have a strong beginning, middle, and end.  This should then carry over to their regular writing effortlessly, making their written pieces stronger.  For Thanksgiving, the kids worked on "How to Cook a Turkey", which were funny seeing how seven year olds would do that! Today they worked on simpler "how tos", such as, how to make a peanut butter and jelly.  This has less steps, ensuring students don't leave out a crucial part of their piece.  They seem to be doing well with these and we will continue working on this type of writing for the rest of the week, then we are going to work on persuasive writing : ) Have an excellent Tuesday!

Exploring our world : )

In second grade, the main focus in social studies is Japan. However, we decided there is so much more we can teach the kids, and we decided to study all of the continents.  We finished our study of North America last month, and are currently exploring South America! Each time we move to a new continent, we take a "plane ride" to our next destination.  We move the chairs into rows on the rug, print our boarding passes for the students, and play videos of animals and cultures the students will learn about during our time there.  The kids REALLY enjoy this (and so do the teachers!).  We've been doing a lot of activities on the IPads during class, as well as center time.  They've had a wonderful time learning about the animals found in the rain forest and now have a deep appreciation for where we live after seeing that there aren't many "luxuries" in other parts of the world! We are finishing up our visit to South America this week, and then will be flying off to Antarctica on Friday!

Crazy about the moon!

Hello Families!

This is officially our first post to the webpage this year, and I promise they will be coming more frequently now! We have just finished up our study of the moon, and the kids had a blast! Aside from working hard and learning some very tough material, the kids were able to do a lot of fun experiments and projects. They all did incredibly well with this unit, and Kelsey and I were so proud of them.  Here are some pictures of the fun things we did!

We made phases of the moon crowns (surprisingly, the boys were even excited to wear them!). . .

 

 

We made "Moon Goons!"

 



And we wrote haiku poems about the moon (and sponge painted!), which went along with our literacy unit : )