Family Venn Diagram

Remember that interview your child did for homework last week?  Well they put it to good use today and created these wonderful Venn diagrams comparing and contrasting themselves with the person they interviewed.  They really did a great job.  It is so fun watching them all get so engrossed in project based learning!

What We've Been Up to This Week

Hello friends!  Our All About Me Unit is coming along beautifully!  Since I last shared the kiddos have created precious family trees and family banners.

We have been having a grand old time with end punctuation as well. :)  Each student created an interactive flip book telling all about the three different types of sentences.  Then, to make our learning authentic, our second graders got to be the teachers and teach their first grade buddies all about end punctuation.  They even helped them think of, and write an example sentence for each.  After we were experts, students had a chance to play a fun game where they figured out the correct end punctuation for each sentence and sorted them accordingly.  Way to go second grade stars!  I am so proud of your hard work!

We have started reading centers, and the students are really starting to get the routine.  Thank you Mrs. Madison for being my right hand gal during center time.  This learning could not happen with out you!  You are so appreciated!  I'm a big believer that centers should be independent learning time, which frees me up to meet with small reading groups.  Research shows that students need to practice reading, writing, and working with words every day...so our centers are based around just that!  Students read independently, or with a buddy, they listen to books being read on the computer, they visit the writing center, and they work with words.  Here are our little readers in action!

Buddy Reading

Serious cuteness overload here!  Taking an AR with a buddy.

Sharing writing

Our Writing Center

Working With Words

Readers Gonna Read!

A quick peek at what's going on in math... We are nearing the end of our first chapter of study; addition and subtraction strategies.  Here are our mathematicians working during centers.  I love center time because it allows time to review and practice key concepts.  I think the kids are having so much fun, they don't even realize they are working! Ha!

Odd and Even Marshmallow Roast

Playing Headbands to review vocab.

Finding the missing addends

Making standard form, expanded form, base-ten block s'mores. 

Hope everyone is having a lovely day!  Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

Wrapping Up Our All About Me Unit

A few weeks ago we finished up our All About Me unit.  I thought I would do a little recap and open up the comments for our room 8 students to share some of their thoughts.  Let's take a look!

To kick off the unit, the kiddos created these fun "Me" posters at home and shared them with the class.  We had so much fun learning about our new friends through this project. :)

Then they made these adorable self portraits and wrote a nice paragraph to introduce themselves.

Meanwhile, each student created their own very special name book using an acrostic poem for their name.

Next we learned a bit about our families and created these beautiful family trees.

The following week we made sweet family banners, wrote about our special families, and even started drawing a picture of our family in art class.

Further, we created these great projects showing our special place on the map.

And last but not least we interviewed one of our family members and created a special Venn diagram to compare and contrast our lives to theirs.

And that's a wrap!  We have sure been busy working hard and having fun in room 8!

I'm so excited to open up the comments!  Students (and parents too ;) what was your favorite part of this unit and why?