A Window into our Work Work Time

This week for word work we are continuing our study of the /oo/ sound as in shoe.  I thought I would share a glimpse of what the children who come to room 8 for work work have been up to this week.  As you know we stick with our spelling patterns for two weeks at a time and the children work in their word work class Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday for 30 minutes.  So we meet for a grand total of 6 times before moving on to the next pattern.  This chunk of time seriously goes by in the blink of an eye and I have found that sticking to a no-nonsense routine is an efficient use of our time. When I introduce a new pattern we always spend the first day learning all about it through direct teacher led instruction. Then for the next four times we meet, I do a mini lesson and the children quickly disperse to work on their word work center.  I change the centers each week so keep things fresh.  Below you can see the centers we have been working on this week.

Spelling Cents ~ Finding the value of your spelling words

Spelling City

Spelling Sentences

Contractions

Hairy Money

By the way...have you ever heard of "hairy money"???  Well if you know someone who is having a tough time counting coins read on!  This noteworthy tool was shared with me by our resource teacher.  I have used touch money in the past as a visual aid, but hairy money totally takes the cake!  Basically for each five you put a hair on the president's head.  A nickel gets one hair, a dime gets two hairs, and a quarter gets five hairs.  Poor penny is bald because its value is only one cent.  When my little kiddies want to find the total value of a group of coins all they have to do is put they correct "hairs" on each coin and then count by 5's and add the 1's.
I have found this to be super duper successful!  Which makes me happy!

Simple Machines Scavenger Hunt

We did technically start learning about magnets today, but I just had one more simple machine activity I had to squeeze in. :) First we quickly reviewed the six simple machines we studied last week.  Then the students worked with a partner to read through 30 examples (Yes 30!  And they were so engaged!  Science I tell ya') of various simple machines and decide as a group which one it was.  Next they went on a scavenger hunt around the classroom to search for he answers.  Each question had a card assigned to it with the information they needed to be sure their answers' were correct.  My teacher heart is extremely happy to see my students collaborating so well together and reading informational text so closely.  Way to go second graders!

Simple Machines

My students sure LOVE themselves some science fun, :) so we have had a blast with simple machines this week! We started out with our pals Annie and Moby from Brain Pop.  Then we watched a great episode all about simple machines with Bill Nye the Science Guy.  That Bill Nye is sure humerous!  The room was brimming with giggles. :) Here is the link to check it out.

We have been working on two big projects to go with this unit.  An amazing flip flap book and a marshmallow launch!

Theses fantastic books came from an amazing teacher, Jane Feener.  Thank you!

On the cover the students illustrated an example of each of the six simple machines.

Then on the inside, each simple machine got its own mini flap book where we wrote about it and gave examples.  We also have key vocabulary words and a pocket to keep our simple machines booklet.  The informational text booklet is where we gathered most of our information.

The finished products turned out to be super cool!  I'm amazing by the effort the students have been demonstrating lately.  They are starting to look like third graders, -tear :)

After we filled our heads with knowledge about simple machines the students worked with a partner to create a marshmallow launcher!  The collaboration, creativity, and problem solving was priceless.  I really should have taken a video to share!  Shouts of, "I got it!" and "Ohhh I need a fulcrum!" and "How about this idea?!" were the talk of the day.

Later we measured the distance each launcher could sling a marshmallow and graphed the results.  Can you believe one catapulted 30 feet!?  I was shocked!  Thank you Jennifer Maschari for the excellent resource!

Wow, what a week!  My brain is buzzing, my heart is full, and I am officially exhausted!

Second Grade Presents Geology Rocks!

Yesterday the second graders presented the fantastic musical play, Geology Rocks!  I am so proud of the kiddos hard work memorizing lines, songs, and dance moves.  They sure put on a great show!  I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. :)  Here are a few pre-show photos of our talented students!

Professor Rock's Students

Ferns

Sea Shore, Canyon, and Valley

Earth

Holmes and Watson

Have a wonderful and relaxing Spring Break all!  

Adventures in Planting

I just wanted to check back with an update on our planting adventures.  Two weeks ago we planted flowers in different types of soil and we also planted seeds.  Each week we observed our plants and wrote about what we noticed.  Thankfully nothing completely died, and most all of the seeds (with the exception of cantaloup) germinated at least.  Hooray!  We did have some unexpected happenings along the way... we spotted aphids (eek!), then we had thousands of ladybugs brought in to save the day (double eek!).  I have to say that watching the seed to plant process gets me every time! It is so amazing how quickly those little guys grow!

Geology Gamers

Ok so to be totally honest I was a little worried about how this "great idea" of mine would work out... But oh my the kids did Ah-mazing!  I wanted to create a culminating project for our geology unit to assess the students' knowledge, so we made these fantastic 100% kid created games.  I showed an example of a game I once created to go with a book and the only real instructions I gave them were that their game needed a title, instructions for play, and question cards with geology questions.  The students took it from there and became genius game creators.  The collaboration among the students was absolutely precious.  They truly supported each others' efforts and as a result they came up with the most creative ideas and were inventive problem solvers.  What a wonderful hands-on, project to end our geology unit!  And P.S. this was the absolute perfect activity to work on the week before Spring Break. :)