We have been studying Earth and how it changes. We’ve talked about slow changes like weathering and erosion; fast changes like earthquakes, volcanoes and floods; landforms like plateaus, mountains, plains, barrier islands (which I have to admit I didn’t really know about!); and about bodies of water. Because we needed to breathe a little bit of life into our work after having been discussing and watching videos for a few days, and because I know my kiddos are builders and creators at heart, I tried to figure out a design challenge of sorts that we could try. There were many options I could have employed (and still might), but I thought that bodies of water would be a nice place to start.
So kiddos chose groups (in 4s) and then I explained their job: Create a representation of the body of water they get (I passed out cards to each group) so that everyone else can guess what it is. They had options for research before they got started if they needed clarification on the characteristics of their body of water, and they could use whatever supplies in our room that they wanted. There was a 30 minute time limit.
So do you think you can guess what each one is? Try it out. Here is body of water #1, a picture and a video (oh, and the video might have a spoiler, so guess before you watch it!):
Ok, here’s #2:
Try it with group #3:
Group #4 made this:
Check out #5, made with Legos:
Ok, and now that you’re done, check your answers. Promise that you’ve tried it?
#1–ocean #2–creek #3–lake #4–river #5–bay
The best part? We had fun, we learned alot and the only thing I’ve heard since we finished is “When are we going to do this again??” 🙂
You might remember that last year we prepared for a Mystery Skype by Skyping with Ms. Turken’s class INSIDE of our school. We were ready and had a plan, but then our Skype that we had scheduled fell through. Somehow we didn’t get another on the books until this year. So a week or so ago we did a Mystery NUMBER Skype with Ms. Bartin’s class at Keysor–the next step above someone in our school is in our school district. hee hee
Then, when I tweeted about how much fun we’d had, I asked for any takers on another Mystery Skype. We quickly got a bite from Mrs. LaRose’s 2nd graders! We quickly put a day and time on the schedule and I got busy getting my class ready for the big time.
Since a few years ago when I did this with 5th graders, I have made some new “friends” on Twitter and knew that they would be the right ones to go to for help. Paul Solarz, 5th grade teacher extraordinaire and author of Learn Like a Pirate has some GREAT Mystery Skype resources, and I used many of them to get us prepared for our conversation.
It started with determining our jobs. While Mr. Solarz has 5th graders and does most of his Mystery Skype work online, we were still able to use many of their listed jobs, modified a little to fit our needs.
While I think that Mr. Solarz assigns jobs, we had a meeting before we got started and I explained each job, then we decided who should do each one. If more than the allotted number wanted a specific job, kiddos had to find a way to decide who should do it (many of them played rock-paper-scissors to get to a decision). In the end, we agreed that the right people were in the right jobs, based on their strengths and personalities.
I was excited (as were they) and even though I had done this many times before, I really didn’t know what to expect because I hadn’t done it with this format in any other session previously. Because we were ready a little early (ok, I did that on purpose), we were able to practice. We were able to run through the whole deal twice, with me pretending to be the other class and them trying out their assigned jobs (thanks, Mr. Solarz for that idea–it was SUPER helpful!). First I was in Illinois (Chicago, actually) and then I was in Florida (ok, fine–Orlando). If you know me at all, you could probably guess those would have been my choices. Ok, fine, they probably had a little head start on that, too. Anyway…
While we were working, I was surprised with how busy everyone was, how well they worked together and how quiet but bustling the room was! We were even able to host a few teachers who wanted to see what this whole Mystery Skype thing was about without any real trouble. Thanks for Ja’Mia and Landen for submitting the pictures for this post, and for Khalani for taking the video.
Check out our archives from our first-ever REAL Mystery Skype!
After we were finished, we sat down to debrief and it was great how excited they all still were–I had them turn and talk so everyone could get all their thoughts out, then they shared some with me. Here is a little of what kiddos said, some positive and some things we might change:
I liked holding up the “Good job” sign, it made me feel great to see everyone focusing, learning and doing the right thing! -Sara
I thought it was fun and I really wanted to do a good job to help out our class! -Thomas
I liked that I helped find Vermont! -Amber
I didn’t like walking around the whole time. -Landen
I liked my job because I got to remind people. -Ella Marie
I thought it was tricky trying to find a question. -Emily
I liked it when Nate and Charlie asked about the time zone. -Lawrence
I like that my behavior was good. I got a “good job” card and I really wanted to do my very best for our class! -Jacob
I liked being a greeter. I was good at that job because I am friendly. -Joshua
I liked learning things that I didn’t know about our state. -Ava
I liked learning about maps. -Evan
We also debriefed on jobs. The consensus was that there were too many researchers, and that we needed to add a couple of new ones: Tweeters and Closers. Mrs. Sisul, our principal, texted me during our session and asked that I make sure to Tweet since she couldn’t make it and I could not believe that I hadn’t even thought about it! We will definitely find some friends to do that next time, as well as choose two friendly kiddos to close the call and say thanks and good bye. 🙂
One more thing…it’s very long and it’s kind of shaky–it’s our first time, after all–but I think it gives a great example of all the hustle, bustle and hard work that was happening during our Mystery Skype. We’d love to hear what you think, especially if you notice anything or have any questions.
This year we finally did a Mystery Skype with someone that wasn’t inside our school. Remember that from last year? It really was pretty cool anyway.
I have a friend, Jen Bartin, who teaches 2nd grade at another school in our district, who was looking to do her first Mystery Skype as well, and we decided a good first try would be with a mystery number rather than location. Nope, that wouldn’t be very hard to figure out.
Unlike a typical Mystery Skype, we needed a hundreds chart instead of a map. We got ourselves into pairs and brainstormed what kinds of questions we could ask to narrow down the number. We had done this kind of thing before as our Math Warm-Up, as well as a game we play during Math Workshop. The part that we hadn’t done was talk to another class over our computer while also answering questions about our own mystery number. But we were excited and prepared.
While we chatted, kids took turns at the computer asking and answering a question. Ja’Mia and Ella Marie were in charge of writing down the questions each class asked, and Landen and Amelia had the important task of marking the 100s chart to narrow down the choices as we got information from our answers.
It didn’t take us long, but it took them even less time to figure out our number was 62. We did a great job of asking broad enough questions that we crossed of lots of numbers, but specific enough ones that we finally got it right. This was fun and we were ready to do another one!!
I take a lot of pictures. Most of them are related to what we’re learning, but sometimes there just for fun. Cute pictures that make us happy or of silly stuff that 2nd graders do. This is one of those “just for fun” posts. 🙂 And yes, I asked them if I could take these pictures and post them here. Some of them even asked me to! LOL
This was actually the photo that inspired this post. How could you NOT put a picture of twin Darth Vaders on your blog? 🙂
I tweeted this picture when it happened (yes, with permission!), but didn’t post it here. As we were making muffins for our 100th Day celebration, I LOL’d when Tyrin brought up a connection to a favorite Fig Pudding character. He said, “We better be careful or Josh will steal all of our butter and eat it!” LOVE IT!
This one was posted before when I told the story about our door decoration, but I had to post it again because it just shows how silly some Rm. 202 friends can be, especially when you put another 2nd grader behind the camera! Great job, again, Baron! You were an excellent photographer!
Ok, so these are my own kiddos, not my students, but they definitely fit in the category of silly, right? This is what happens when we’re waiting for daddy and the camera comes out. 🙂
What’s more fun than taking a picture in a police car? We went to a pancake fundraiser for the KPD and some nice officers let us take a peek (and a pic!). Riley got to turn on the lights and siren, too! WOHOO!
I think I posted this one before, too, but it just made me laugh at how Jacob is tying himself in a knot to show me his fortune!
Ok, just two more. Gotta love a squeeze from your teammate, and this picture is just to remember the times when super great kids come up and say “Can I take your picture and print it so I can write about you in my Writer’s Notebook?” I’d say there’s no greater honor. 🙂
What would you put in a post that was called Just for Fun?? Leave us a comment and tell us about something fun you’ve done lately! We’d love to read your comments. 🙂
This month at our school there has been a door decorating contest. Since our class seems to always be doing 10,000 things at once–all fun and motivating, of course!–I chose not to participate in this project. It was running for the last two weeks and the classes on both sides of us (Hi, Ms. Turken and Mrs. Appelbaum!) have been creating amazing displays, and no one in my class has really said anything. A couple of friends inquired in passing, but were fine with my answer of “We are doing so many other things right now!” It wasn’t until the last few days of the contest when someone finally asked me about it and wasn’t so happy with my answer….instead of “ok,” he asked, “What if I do it?” I am almost always on board with kiddos taking the lead on things, so I was willing to play the game with him. I told him he could TOTALLY do it, if he was in charge of the whole thing and that the only time I had to give them to work was recess. I have to admit I was a little surprised, but he was instantly on board. This was Friday, so he was given the weekend “homework” of figuring out the theme, the plan and the ideas for how the rest of the class could help get it done.
I have to be honest that I was expecting him to come back on Monday having changed his mind, but instead he had a pretty well developed plan and excitement to include his classmates. We made plans for who would come to join us at lunch and recess, and almost the whole class wanted to help!!
We only had from Monday until Thursday after lunch to complete our BIG job, so on the first day we brought our lunches up and worked for as much of our 40 minute lunch period as we could. By the end of that day, we had the background up and a great plan for what we would do the next day. Oh, and we ate our lunches. LOL
Can you tell our theme just by this picture?
Well, if you know my friend who planned it, that would be an easy give-away, too, but I’ll just tell you that we had the theme of teamwork, shown through a football game. We have a HUGE rival down the road in Webster Groves, so that’s the reason for the red and orange end zones. Our rough-draft plan looked like this:
On this first day we had about 16 kiddos working and not many jobs, so I worked it out with one friend to be our photographer. I needed pictures to document our work and he wanted to help, so bingo! I am super happy I did it, now, too, because it’s so great to get a kids-eye-view on what we’re doing. Obviously he took very different pictures than I would have (and I’m even in some of them! Thanks for being kind–LOL), and it makes me think I should hand over the iPhone more often! Check out the work we did on our first day. Oh, and I didn’t edit them at all. I kind of thought it was very organic and “real” with his fingers were in some of them. I also love that you can see conversations happening in many of them, as well as how messy it is working with 2nd graders; I think often I try to crop and edit our life into just the right picture. But you know, honestly sometimes we just watch. And sometimes we leave big piles of paper laying around, and often it takes 6 people to do the job of 1 person. But no matter what, we work together, solve problems together and have fun with each other.
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Our second stop in the process was to create the field, with yard lines, names and goalposts. Some friends started on bleachers and a crowd, but we quickly had to scrap that part for time’s sake. Next decide about teams, then create football player and cheerleader versions of us to play the game. For this job, I did give them some class time, as there really wouldn’t have been enough with just recesses to make that part happen. We divided in half, created the parameters (7 inches tall), and even decided that we should have a mascot (Remember my photographer friend? He was cast as Pioneer Pete!). Again, here’s what it looked like while we were working, from a kids’-eye-view of the room:
Once we were all said and done, our entry into the door decorating contest looked like this:
I was SUPER impressed with how quickly it came together, with how well everyone worked together towards a common goal, and how willing my friend was to lead us all to this great product! On Tuesday at the end of the day, as we were having our closing circle, more than one kiddo thanked him for being a bold leader. What a great way to end the day! Way to go, Rm. 202 friends!!
We have not had a chance to see our Learning Buddies very much lately. 5th Graders are busy people! When we heard they were busy tackling a Read-a-Thon on Friday, we knew we wanted to join in! While they were spending their whole day (6 hours!) enjoying a book, we were only able to be there for a little chunk of that time. Some Rm. 202 friends suggested we should plan our own read-a-thon, though, for a future date, too!
Before we came to visit them, Dr. Grayson’s room had a lesson with Mrs. Meihaus, our amazing librarian, about how to read to a younger student. Our buddies were then armed with their “lesson plan” and shared really great books with us after lunch. It was so much fun! Oh, and it was also Hat Day at our school to raise money for the NIYO Cultural Center in Rwanda (Hi, Pacifique!), which added to the festive spirit. Enjoy some pictures of our afternoon!
We did something this past week that has never happened in Rm. 202–or in any classroom I’ve taught in: celebrated Chinese New Year! Our friend Baron’s mom, Mrs. Eyrick, was born in Taiwan, and offered to come share some of their Chinese culture with us. It was perfect because we both got to see a little more about our friend and his family, and also, it fit in with our Social Studies unit right now. Match made in heaven!
She showed up a little early and got busy decorating with some traditional Chinese New Year symbols and colors. We learned that red and gold are important, as they stand for life and fortune. Mrs. Eyrick brought us a dragon, lanterns (realized I didn’t get any pictures of those! :(), some fish as well as decoration for our door and a big Happy New Year sign. So festive!
We sat down together on the rainbow rug and she told us all about the history of Chinese New Year, and how the Western Hemisphere (where we live) bases their calendar on the sun, and how the Eastern Hemisphere (where China is) bases their calendar on the moon (lunar) phases. She explained the Chinese Zodiac, and told us how friends in China celebrate this happy time.
She even brought us a treat! She shared traditional Chinese New Year “lucky” food–clementines–and gave each kiddo a lucky red envelope. It had real money inside!! We also got to enjoy some other Chinese tasty treats together.
What a great afternoon and a fabulous celebration! Thanks, Mrs. Eyrick, for coming to teach us about your culture. 🙂
I didn’t want to call this post just Valentine’s Day, partly because we tried to celebrate it differently (does that surprise you?), but also because it didn’t really happen on February 14. This story is from Thursday, but in elementary school world, it was the last day of school before Valentine’s Day so alas that’s what we celebrated. Ok. I’ll move on.
As with the 100th Day, this day felt a little contrived to me–what 7-YO has a Valentine? Ok, well maybe their mom, but no REAL Valentine. Or maybe the whole class is their Valentine? Anyhow, I began thinking a week or so ago about what we could do that made this day about something real and “normal” in our classroom. I decided to connect to the conversations we’ve been having about caring and showing each other that they are important. I mean Valentine’s Day is about love, right? Caring is love. 🙂
So I formed our day around these three essential questions:
Since these are big, “chewy” questions, we didn’t really answer them, but we did think about them as we went through the day, and referred to them at various times, as well.
Our first job of the day was to read a book together, which was about a dragon who wrote Valentines for all of the people she loved. It was an ABC book, and while we didn’t do anything with all of the letters of the alphabet, we did take some time to tell the people we care about how we felt about them (remember our questions?).
This was one of those areas where I wanted to be really purposeful with Valentine traditions, rather than “cutesy” or just fun. Last year we did a pretty cool Makerspace situation, and while it wasn’t a real Makerspace since I gave them their purpose, they were able to create and try and discover and explore, which was great. This time I wanted them to be able to both give love and get some back, so we decorated our Valentine bags with words.
I gave them the big idea and even some stems that they could use:
These were not “have-tos,” but I wanted to give them some place to start so that we didn’t end up with 20 different “I’m glad you’re my friend”s.
Next was getting them into a spot so we could start our bags. We did this in a version of the game Scoot, where they would “scoot” around the room (in a certain order that I’d share) until they wrote on everyone’s bag. I had them get into alphabetical order–like dragon’s Valentines had been in the book–and then gave them a spot to start. Basically I started in one corner of the room and just snaked the line around, putting each kid in a seat/spot as we went. They would then rotate one slot each “scoot,” following the person in front of them each time. It was honestly kind of complicated, taking the layout of our room, but they got it by about the 4th or 5th rotation and then I didn’t have to lead them anymore. I was honestly surprised. Surprised but really impressed and happy. 🙂
I wish I had taken a picture of each one, to document how sweet their words were to each other, but I didn’t. I only have ones of how great they look all lined up in the hall. That is where they were as we delivered Valentine’s cards to our friends.
I didn’t get pictures of their bags, but I did get a pic of their words to me. Check out how caring and lovely they were to me:
Pretty great, right? 🙂
Later on in the day we had a party. Mrs. Raeber, along with many other parents (and grandparents!) came to help us have a fun time at the end of our day. We had a snack, played a game, read some winter/Valentine’s Day books and make a keychain. What a perfect collection of fun, low-key things to do! These parents are super good at giving us lovely things!
Check out some pictures. They are pretty sweet. 🙂
Mrs. Mintzlaff led a “Minute-to-Win-It” game where we had to stack hearts.
Ms. Ross helped us make heart keychains with beads.
Look at all of those books!
Ella Marie’s grandpa came all the way from Minnesota!
Yum!
Those smiles tell it all! Sara’s mom, Mrs. Ruhl, got to join us, too. I don’t have a picture of her, but we were SUPER happy to see Peyton’s mom today, too. 🙂
Mrs. Raeber shares popcorn at the kitchen table.
Love this picture of Ja’Mia and her grandma. Memories were being made here for sure! 🙂
There’s more to share–but that’s for another post. Hope you have a great weekend, and that you feel loved and cared for this Valentine’s Day! 🙂
I figured out today why I have such a hard time deciding what to write on this blog: I like for things to fit nicely into categories/tags/subjects/projects, and so often, the things we do around Rm. 202 are not that way. I find that maybe I’ve gotten to that place where many of our subjects overlap–just like I’ve always hoped they would! I know, that sounds like I’m not doing it on purpose (which of course I am, as I carefully plan how and when and why), but I think sometimes when you’re in the middle of something you can’t really see the big picture (isn’t there some quote about forests and trees that would fit here? LOL).
So as I think about how to describe what we’ve been doing in Writing lately, it’s hard to explain just the writing part, because it includes reading (which is perfect, as those two subjects go hand-in-hand anyway, right?). We have been working on writing opinion letters, with most of our topics being about the series books we’re reading in our book clubs. Luckily, though, there are lots of other things to have opinions about, so we’ve been trying out that structure with other topics, too.
We’ve gone through many versions, with me teaching mini-lessons and kiddos then trying out the big ideas. We’ve talking about format of a letter; stating opinions; adding reasons as well as details and support for those reasons; using transition words like one reason is, another reason is, last but not least (which many kiddos were doing already just based on learning them last year!); as well as just using interesting words and making our letter match our audience. The procedure became that they would write a letter, but then rather than actually delivering it to that person, they’d give it to me, and I’d note what they did right and what they could work on for next time.
We wrote about books, 100th Day of school suggestions, ideas about why their weekends were good, as well as many other things about which you could have an opinion. I was noticing, though, that over the last few weeks our letters had been getting shorter and less detailed (which was obviously not the goal!). We had a class meeting and Millie suggested that the reason this was happening was because they had written so many letters that actually they were getting really sick of it and weren’t trying their best anymore. While this was sad, I totally saw how that could be, and as impressed by her insight. Others agreed and so I made a plan that we would work our hardest to create our best final letters (to Mrs. Meihaus, our librarian, about our vote for the Show-Me Reader Award) over the next 3 days and then be done.
So as I thought about what we would do for those next 3 days, I knew I needed to give another model to my writers about what that letter should look and sound like. And since I wanted them to write about books, I did, too. My letter was about my favorite read-aloud choice, Fig Pudding by Ralph Fletcher. It looked like this:
I had hung the letter up there before the day started, and it was one of the first things (thankfully) that kiddos noticed when they came in. Yeah, the first response was “Wow, that’s long!” Later on, I had them look at it, studying it to answer this question: How do I write a STRONG Show-Me letter? Not surprisingly, they were able to notice a whole page full of things that I had in my letter that they needed to put in theirs.
As they made their list, I marked their ideas on the actual letter (notice the different colors and the things we boxed in) so we could reference it later. I was impressed to see that they had been paying attention, and that they could come up with that all on their own!
After this, I gave kiddos a graphic organizer to use to plan their letter and we got busy. We’re almost done, so I’ll share our progress in the next few days. It’s pretty good stuff!
One of the things that happens to over-thinkers thinkers like me is that there are often loads and loads of jumbled thoughts all up there in my head at the same time. I find it a very rare occurrence that I am only thinking about or planning thing at a time (is this called multi-tasking or just crazy?!). Today is one of those days when there are many things filling the space between my ears, and so as a means to think some of it through, I’m writing about it.
This weekend means that yes, I’m “off” because it’s not a school day, but when you’re a teacher you’re never really not not thinking about school or how to make your classroom a better place for the learners you spend every day with. Today this thinking was magnified as I was attending #edcampStl (Ed Camp St. Louis), learning and growing with other fabulous educators.
As with every EdCamp experience, I left with my head spinning because of all of the inspiring conversations. Along with the general planning I’m thinking about for next week and the coming month, I’ve got some other things on my mind after today:
Teaching Artistic Behaviors–100% Choice Learning: Today I went to a really great EdCamp session with Kelly Lee (@yogagirly). I wasn’t really sure what I was in for (but thought maybe it was how to add more art/design into regular subjects), and then I found out it was by an art teacher and I was really more unsure (I have a good record of picking badly by the title of the session…). It ended up being something really inspirational, and now I’m trying ot figure out how to use her ideas in my own classroom with 2nd grade. The basic premise is that in her art class, Ms. Lee has her room broken into “studios” based on mediums (collage, drawing, fiber, digital and painting). Each day, artists listen to SHORT lesson or inspiration (based on a concept, artist, etc.) and then choose which studio in which to work for the day. In their plan book, students make a goal and plan for the class time, and then spend time in that studio working to achieve their personal goal. At the end of the class time, 5 minutes is provided for reflection on the day’s work. As I sat and listened, I tried to imagine how I could tweak this idea to include all the subjects I teach, perhaps with just 5 studios (or decks since we’re working on being pirates!) that would work for everything we do. Right now I’m trying to decide if something based around the multiple intelligences would work….
Biography as Narrative Non-Fiction: I am not sure if I’ve mentioned here before that my team does a really cool thing with planning, and each person (there are 5 of us) is responsible for creating the plan for everyone for one subject. I’m in charge of writing, and so I’ve had the opportunity to share some exciting things with my teammates (and therefore their students!) this year, like blogging, a new way to think about Writer’s Notebooks, and a punctuation study. Right now we’re about to start a new unit–biography per the curriculum calendar–and I’m having a hard time getting started. I remember teaching that unit with 4th and 5th graders and it was BRUTAL! I’m really not so excited about 1) trying to write that genre with little kids, and 2) planning a non-fiction unit right after we did one (we’re all working on creating picture books about the cultures we’re researching in Social Studies). So…I’ve been on the search for some fresh ideas of how to teach biography to young writers and help them be able to successfully write about inspirational characters–most of whom are probably from long ago and hard to understand. I know that I want to include lessons on important vs. interesting information, as well as investigations into the elements of a biography as well as the definition of a paragraph, but beyond that I am dreading the whole thing! I ran across a unit online the other day, though, that explains how to write biography as a form of narrative non-fiction, rather than expository or descriptive non-fiction (which is what we’ve been doing anyway). I like the idea of trying something new, as well as thinking about how this could be a good transition between NF writing and the narrative fiction that we’re doing next. This could be the bridge. Most of the texts we share with students are written in this genre anyway, so it might not be as hard as maybe I first thought…..
Valentine’s Day Questions (yep, I question a lot of things….): ‘Tis the season to celebrate. Two weeks ago it was the 100th Day of School–which I think we ended up with a great plan for–and now this week has Valentines’ Day (ok, well, V Day is not until Sunday, but we will celebrate it on Thursday). Again, I feel pulled to do a litany of “cute” things that kids will enjoy, full of glitter and glue and hearts and fun (here’s how we decided to spend the day last year). I’m not at all opposed to having fun (we’ve talked before about how we have fun every day in Rm. 202!), but to put aside our learning to….wow–even as I just typed that I had an epiphany….(weird, right?)…
Let me show you a picture to explain the thought I just had:
This wrapper was funny to me because it came from a friend the day after my coach and friend, Amy, had reminded me of this question when we were talking about 100th Day Questions. Just now as I was in the middle of saying how I didn’t think it was the right thing to do to just abandon our work and PLAY, I was reminded of what I say I’m about; play and fun and laughter are important parts of the learning we do together. So….see why the thoughts are all jumbled? Who knew teaching 2nd grade would be so hard!? It’s the parties and fun parts that make me crazy, not the curriculum! (Maybe it’s me who’s the crazy one…).
Have any suggestions? I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of my jumbled thinking. 🙂 Remember, it takes a village!
20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher 