During reading we learned all about an author's purpose. We learned that authors write books for several reasons. First, they may write their book to PERSUADE the reader to do something or to think like they do about a topic. Second, the author may write a book to INFORM (or teach) their reader about a certain topic. Lastly, the author may write to ENTERTAIN a reader. They may want the reader to laugh and have fun with the book. The students made a pie visual to help them remember the three reasons why an author may write a book. The next time you read a book with your child, see if he/she can tell you what the author's purpose may be!
We spent some time during the past two weeks, reading and learning more about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his lasting contributions to our society. The students work independently, with partners and in small groups to read several different short passages about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We then worked to answer questions and learn new vocabulary words associated with Dr. King's work. The kids love to learn about this amazing man and the look of shock on their faces when they learn how poorly others were treated is priceless! They have great hearts! They also enjoyed watching the video "My friend Martin."
The kids had a great time with our countdown to break activities this week. We loved game day and did a great job sharing and taking turns. It was priceless to see the kids teaching each other games, giggling and truly just having a good time playing with each other. They also really enjoyed our arts and crafts time. We put out a plethora of art materials and they were encouraged to create whatever they wanted. Wow....did we have some creative projects!!
We spent several weeks comparing two Jan Brett stories, Trouble with Trolls and Christmas Trolls. The second graders did a fabulous job of identifying character traits for the main character Treva and the Trolls. They were able to pick a character traits and provide evidence from the story to support that trait. They are becoming great writers! We also did a reading comprehension activity to see how well we could answer questions about our reading. The kids had to find the questions around the room and answer them on a recording sheet. An emphasis was placed on answering the questions with complete sentences. We talked about using part of the question while writing our answers.
The second graders read the book, The Wild Christmas Reindeer by Jan Brett this week. We sequenced events in the story with a cut and paste activity. We also talked about character traits while thinking about the main character in the story, Teeka. Teeka was asked to train the reindeer to fly the sleigh on Christmas Eve. The students listened carefully to see how Teeka changed in the story. We searched for evidence in the text to support our ideas about Teeka. We then wrote a piece about how Teeka had changed in the story. The kids did a fantastic job with this activity. After writing about Teeka and the reindeer we drew and colored our own reindeer. These are hung up in the hallways outside our rooms! They are adorable. :)
Our science lessons this week focused on how water changes. We experimented with water in several different ways. First, we put water in small Ziploc bags and recorded our observations in our science notebook. Then we put our bags in the freezer to explore the following day. We also weighed a cup of water before and after it was in the freezer. The water weighed about the same frozen as it did not frozen!! Third, we put a cup of uncovered water on the windowsill and a cup of covered water on the windowsill. We will watch these cups closely over the next week to see what happens. Last, we drew a water picture on construction paper with a paintbrush. We watched to see what would happen. The water disappeared after a few minutes!!! It was like magic! See if your child can tell you about these experiments and what they learned from them.
We used our science knowledge to write informational pieces about matter. The students explored matter (solids, liquids and gases) books on Epic and took notes on facts that they learned. They then used these facts to create a paragraph on matter, solids, liquids and gases. These pieces are still a work in progress, and it is a great way to see what each student has learned about solids, liquids and gases. While taking notes, we learned that we have to put information in our own words and should not copy words directly from the book.
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