Sea Turtles

This week we studied all about sea turtles.  Students worked collaboratively to collect information about their habitat, diet, appearance, predators, and other generally interesting facts.  Then they wrote informational trifold brochures and created spectacular art.  Our room is turning into an under the sea beauty!

Teamwork.

Buddy research.

Lot's of learning.

Artists in action. 

masterpiece

masterpiece

Enjoying tea and working on writing. 

Sensational Sea Stars

This week one of our main focuses (foci???) was on the stars of the sea!  The others were economics and math, more to come on those later! We have had a blast learning about these amazing creatures.  To kick off our learning I created a game called Sea Stars Fact or Fib.  This made our learning and research extremely engaging and interactive.  First we read through several sea star cards and sorted them into categories of fact, fib, or unknown.  Then students worked in partnerships to read informational text on sea stars.  Every time they came to something that was on one of our sea star cards they were up out of their seat to check and make sure we sorted it in the correct place.  What a great way to keep those active bodies moving and engaged!  Next students took notes on their favorite sea star facts, wrote informational paragraphs, and created scientific diagrams.

To round out our study and tie in what we have been learning with figurative language, students wrote sea star similes.

Our highlight was when Mrs. Denis brought in actual live sea stars for our second graders to touch and examine!  Thank you for making our learning come to life!  Those tubed feet are even more amazing in person.

Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie

Well we have officially left the world of geology and are beginning our adventures with the sea!  To kick off this unit we read a wonderful book called, Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie.  This is true story of courage.  It tells all about how a young girl kept the lighthouse lights burning all by herself during a tremendous storm.  If you like books about bravery, then this is the book for you.  But you don't have to take my word for it...

As we read the book we really focused on deep thinking comprehension skills.  Students determined the main idea, wrote down interesting words, discussed the story parts, determined Abbie's character traits, sequenced the story, shared their favorite part, and wrote a letter to the main character.  Wow!  We have been busy!

 

We also tied in math to create these neat lighthouses using coordinate graphing.

I absolutely love all the fantastic art that accompanies our ocean unit.  Here is our first piece -lighthouses.  Students designed their lighthouse then outlined it in black Sharpie.  Next they used crayons to color it in.  We pressed super hard so they look like pastels minus all the smudging.  Last they watercolored the background.  Two cool things about this watercolor process were that they used salt to make it look like was raining, and the resist of the crayon shows the light shining brightly.

 

Reading Centers and Tracking Our Math Progress

With the dust of Open House settling, we are now back to a bit of normalcy.  (In an end of school year kinda way! HA!) Here's a little peek at what we've been up to with reading centers this week.   We have been working on the Dive Right In and Investigate the Ocean centers from Swimming Into Second Grade.  (By the way, I'm sot sure if I've mentioned lately how much I love the amazing network of teacher bloggers out there.  They inspire me daily!  In fact they sparked me to start this sweet little blog.  A heartfelt thank you to teacher bloggers everywhere.  You fill my sails!)
Back to our reading center time... :)
We have been working on 9 different centers.  Here are the ones a managed to snap a picture of:

Octopus Antonyms

Shark Facts and Opinions

Sea Turtle Synonyms

Crabby Adjectives

These Ocean Centers have been so perfect!  They kept the students working and engaged which allowed me to complete all of my end of year assessments.  Phew!  Quite a feat if I do say so myself! Each student has made so much growth this year and I am so very very proud of their accomplishments.  Look out third grade here we come!

We have also been working so hard completing all of our end of year Common Core math assessments.  (Also a gem of a resource created by Clutter-Free Classroom) This was definitely a process!  Each morning for a little over a week the students took a few assessments that covered the Common Core math standards.  Then, I quickly graded their work and returned them either that very day, or the following morning.  (The reward was worth working through lunch -for sure!) The reason I was so speedy to return the assessments was because the students graphed their results for each math standards.  This was SUCH a POWERFUL learning experience!  To hear my little BIG :) second graders discussing what concepts they had mastered and which ones they needed to practice was priceless.  It also upped the motivation level to put forth best effort on the assessments each day.  Each assessment had 10 points possible, if they scored 70% or above they showed mastery, 60% or below meant we needed to practice a little bit and try again.  Since we covered all the standards throughout the year most just needed a quick refresher or explanation of what the problem was asking since it was a different format from our usual Saxon math pages.   I have been busy pulling small groups all week to answer questions and reteach where needed, but my most favorite part of this reteaching process was when the students taught each other.  They each self reflected to see what area they needed to practice or what area they could teach to a peer, then we got busy!  SO POWERFUL!  I am 100% sold on the value of student-centered assessments.  They took such ownership of their learning.  I could go on and on about this process because, well, it was extremely effective. :)  I hope you got the gist.  Please look out for your child to bring home their math assessments.

                                                     

Have you filled a beach bucket today?

In the very beginning of the year we read a book called Have You Filled a Bucket Today?  The book talks about how everyone has an invisible bucket and you can either fill their bucket by showing kindness, caring, and love, or you can dip into someone's bucket by doing things that would bring them down.  All year we have focused on being bucket fillers and the kiddos have done a really good job at this.  (yay! :) happy teacher heart <3) One of my favorite end of the year projects is to officially be "bucket fillers".  To tie into our ocean unit we have made our buckets beach buckets of course!  :) Each student created their own bucket then we started by personally filling our beach buckets.  You have to love yourself before you can love others right?! The students took some time to write down their special and wonderful qualities.  This absolutely melted my heart and the kiddos took their job as bucket fillers very seriously.  Then each day of the week we set apart time to fill each other's beach buckets.  Precious moments and priceless memories filled our sweet classroom.

Have YOU filled a bucket today?