Daily Archives: January 24, 2016

Writing Lately

Elementary school is an interesting thing.  Because of the way that school has been structured for years and years, we teach and learn all the subjects together in one day, yet each one is compartmentalized into it’s only little spot in the schedule.  Well that’s how it’s traditionally done, but I try my hardest to help my kiddos see that “writing” is not just something we do from 10:30 to 11:15 every day, just like “reading” doesn’t only happen from 9:00-10:30.  These are just things that we do as learners and they are ways we learn and show our learning.

That being said…we do have specific things that we do as writers on most school days.  One of those is write.  During Writers’ Workshop.  (I know, I told you it was interesting).  I wanted to share two things that we’ve done lately that help show our growth as writers over time.

First of all was a writing challenge.  I love how when I told my kiddos that we were going to have a writing challenge they pretty much all cheered.  I don’t know if it was the “writing” part or the “challenge” part, but either way I was pleased.  The challenge was to take a piece of writing they had done at the being of our last writing cycle (Small Moments) and work to improve it to show the things they had learned over the last few weeks that they didn’t know before.  They would revise and edit their piece and then publish a final draft.  They worked with a writing partner (which is also something we typically do as writers in our room) to help make sure they didn’t miss anything.  They sure worked hard and their final pieces turned out pretty great!

Secondly, remember how I shared that everybody has their “big” notebook now?  It means I finally got to share the lesson about how to take all those super smart entries they wrote while they were learning about Writers’ Notebooks and save some of them. Basically they had to ask reread the entries in their tiny notebooks, and then ask themselves if they were: 1) important, 2) something that showed what they can do as a writer, 3) something they could use in the future, or 4) something they wanted to remember.  If the answer was YES to any or all of those, then they taped it into their big notebook to save for later.  It was great to see their reflecting and thinking as they evaluated their writing over the last few months.  Great stuff happening there, too!

Rm. 202 Pirate Update

I wrote the other day about how we’re undergone a little bit of a mutiny in Rm. 202.  Don’t worry–it’s all good. 🙂

I realized on Friday that I have a couple of additions I need to share!

I mentioned the first conversation we had about their initial answers to the question “What does it mean to learn like a pirate?” and since then, as we finished our read aloud (Pirates Past Noon), we put some other things on our list that I thought were exceptionally “pirate-like”:

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I was impressed by those last two additions, as they are really two of the things that are really at the heart of what I was hoping for when I brought forth this whole Learn Like a Pirate idea in the first place.  The fact that they also identify that working together is a big deal was a big deal to me.  The explanation that went along with that suggestion was that if we don’t work as a crew, then our ship will sink and that will not be a good thing (we even talked about maybe naming our room like you would a boat–guess we’ll see!).  The last one–share our treasure–was both a good idea and a poetic addition as it could mean os many things; “treasure” has so many definitions, both tangible and abstract.  We could apply it in so many ways. ❤

I don’t remember if I mentioned it in my first post, but what came next was a natural progression (but again something I was hoping would come up!).  Baron and Khalani were reading a pirate book and found a place where it talked about a Pirate Code that should be followed.  They came to be, flabbergasted, as they read things on the list like: Never be kind to mermaids.  Never be kind to anyone. Always carry a cutlass. Always look fierce. Then at the bottom the motto was listed: Rob or rot!  My friends were concerned because they knew that these were definitely NOT things that go along with what we’re about at Robinson.  They shared the code with the class, and a great discussion ensued.

Then, just as if I’d paid them to say it, someone suggested that we write our own pirate code to follow that had the positive aspects (like the ones we had put on our learning like a pirate list).  What? Our own pirate code?  That’s a fabulous idea, 2nd grade! What?  You think that it would be like the Road Rules? Another great idea, Rm. 202 friends! 🙂

We got as far as making an initial list and will work over the next few days to whittle it down to the final points we think are most important.  We’ve got a pretty great list to start with, I’d say:

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Can’t wait to share the final draft someday soon!  Come back and read it, will you? 🙂

 

 

 

100th Day Questions (Again)

Last year I made a jump down to primary after teaching “big” kids for the previous 9 years.  When I last taught 1st graders there was no such thing as celebrating the 100th Day of School.  So when that day came near, I began to consider (like I do with everything else that fits into the “it’s-what-we-do” or “it’s-the-way-it’s-always-been-done” category) what we should (or shouldn’t) do on this day in Rm. 202.  I asked many of my own questions, as well as having conversations with others who were asking the same things.

We ended up deciding on taking on a pretty big challenge in our classroom to write 100 blog posts, and secondly to try to read 100 books.  It was a great day of fun, learning, stretching our brains, working together, solving problems and really figuring out just how big 100 is!  It took us all day, but we made our goal of all of those blog posts and boy, were we proud!

So…as we near the 100th day again (next Thursday!), I’m asking 100th Day questions again.  If I have certain thoughts and feelings about it in regards to 1st graders, how do those apply when I’m now teaching those friends as 2nd graders?  Unlike last year, I decided to take that question to my kiddos.

I explained my thinking, and we talked about what we should do; probably our challenge should be bigger than the one we took as 1st graders, right?  We decided to brainstorm all of our smart ideas (thanks Landen for volunteering to be our recorder!) and then whittle them down from there.

Here’s our list:

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While it’s true that there are no “bad” ideas when you’re brainstorming, we did agree to only add things that we thought would truly be challenges for us, and not just things that were “fun” or “cute.”  I’d say that they did a pretty good job of coming up with some fun and meaningful choices.  But how would we decide which of those were the ones we end up doing?

We are currently in an opinion writing unit and I took this as a great opportunity to continue to hone our skills of sharing our thoughts, giving strong reasons and relevant evidence.  So, kiddos were asked to write me a letter (which we’ve also been practicing) to tell me their top 3 choices, along with 3 good reasons why they want to do those things on our 100th day.  What a meaningful and engaging way to put all of our new skills to work!

We haven’t made any final decisions for our big day, but the front runners right now seem to be puzzles, the 100 dot design challenge (building), playing the 100 game (which is something we do regularly in math), and playing board games.  Can’t wait to see what we end up choosing, and then documenting what actually happens–stay tuned!

I’d love to hear about your 100th day questions and thoughts!  Leave me a comment and let’s chat about it!

Second Grade Math Warm-Ups: Catching Up

If you’ve been around here for a while (thanks!), then you know that one of the “regular” posts I do is to share our math warm-ups each week.  For many reasons that hasn’t happened for the last few months.  So this post is to catch up on some of the best ones from recently. 🙂

Measurement

Before the holidays we were working on measurement (mostly length) and had some questions at the beginning to get minds thinking about how and why we should know how to measure.  The last one also addresses being able to visualize the size of a unit (centimeters) and apply it to appropriate situations.  In between and after all of these, we did lots and lots of measuring with different units, tools and objects.

Measurement (Time)

I only ended up with one picture (sorry!) of this round of warm ups, but after we came back from Winter Break we were still working on measuring, only with time!  There were several days of questions related to where the hands would fall on the clock, how many minutes would have passed if the minute hand were on a certain number, as well as one where the had to tell all the ways to describe a certain time (4:30, half past 4, etc.).

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Measurement (Money)

Now we’re on to money, and so we’re working on some foundational questions that get kiddos thinking about the numbers behind it first.  Then we’ll work more specifically on counting amounts, giving change, etc.

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This first one was just to get kids thinking about groups.  What was great (and what happens often when we discuss the problem later in the day) is that while I never mentioned anything about money, someone used that model to help them figure out the answers and then once we made that connection, it made sense to other friends, too.  Then we could explicitly connect the numbers to coins and amounts we knew (or needed to learn!).

This one got kiddos thinking about combinations that make 25 (which I knew meant a quarter, but wasn’t saying that yet)…

…and then the next day I asked that same question with new parameters (which again I knew was connected to money) to connect to that previous thinking:

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As with most everything else I throw at them, kiddos are doing great things with making connections to previous knowledge and incorporating new concepts.  It’s great to watch them think like teachers and figure out the method to my math warm-up madness–often kids will say “Hey, you asked this question because….”  Good stuff!

If you’re doing math warm-ups, do you have any to share about measuring length, time or money?  We’d love to try them!