Corn Maze and Pumpkin Investigations

Thank you so much Mrs. Hopkin and Grandpa's Farm for letting us come out!  We had a blast on the field trip.  The children loved the maze, the games, sliding, pig races, pumpkin picking, and more!  Also, thank you to all the wonderful parent volunteers.  What an excellent field trip!  Here is a slide show with tons of pictures of our fun!

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When we returned to school, we did some pumpkin investigations with our new pumpkins.  First, the scientists counted and recorded the number of lines on the pumpkins.  Next, the scientists measured.  They had to measure the height in cubes and the circumference.  To find the circumference, the children cut a piece of yarn to fit around the pumpkin then measured the length of the ribbon.  There were a few surprises!  The students also weighed their pumpkins.





Last, we did a sink or float test and tested to see if a hair dryer could move the pumpkin.  The pumpkins were definitely too heavy to budge with a hair dryer.  And, even though we had read that pumpkins could float, many of the students predicted the pumpkins would sink.  Some of the pumpkins were very heavy!  To their amazement, all the pumpkins floated!  Even if the students tried to hold the pumpkin down, it would still float to the top!  The experiment was a catalyst for a really interesting discussion.  These first and second graders were on the verge of some huge science concepts and I just LOVE their curiosity.  Have I told you before, I just think these kiddos are amazing! Thank you again for donating to our learning!

Literacy Centers

Our literacy centers are going strong. Center time is one of the students' favorite times of the day. The children love this time because they get to work independently on all sorts of engaging activities. Our center time practices important skills related to their academic and social development. At each center, the students are in groups of 4. Center time is filled with social interactions so the children are practicing important social skills like sharing, taking turns, cooperating, using manners, polite conversation, and encouraging others. They are also learning to handle and clean up classroom materials. Of course, all this while practicing their literacy skills. While the children are busy working at their centers, I have time to pull small reading groups. In the small groups, we work on reading strategies. So many great things going on during reader's workshop.

Creepy or Cool?

 Halloween is a great time to learn about spiders!  We read a few different nonfiction texts on spiders and even had a guest speaker.  Mr. Palmer arranged for Jeff the Nature Guy from ZooMontana to come in and talk to our class about spiders.  He even brought a tarantula!  We learned so much from him!  After learning about spiders the kids wrote opinion pieces about the arachnids.  Several students changed their opinion from thinking spiders were creepy to thinking they are cool.



The students got creative with spiders and the first graders wrote a recipe for spider soup.  Yum! The second graders designed a whole spooky cafe menu that included appetizers, main courses, and desserts. Weren't the students surprised when on Wednesday I brought some spider soup.  MMmmmm!  Tastes like chicken.

Going Batty!

Bats are so interesting, although I wouldn't want to run into a roost in a dark cave.  Bats do make for a great topic for first and second grade research though!  We used the topic to discuss informational text.  As we read different nonfiction books and articles, we recorded our learning on a RAN (Reading and Analyzing Nonfiction) chart.

The chart starts with our background knowledge.  The students brainstormed what they already thought they knew about bats.  As we read, we moved and added post it notes to the other categories.  When our background knowledge was correct we moved the note to "Yes, we were right."  Of course, when we found text evidence of our thinking we were sure to note the source on the the post-it.  Sometimes, as we read we found that our thinking changed.  For instance, some students thought bats were blind.  As we read, we learned that bats can see quite well in low light.  If our thinking changed, our post-it moved to "We don't think this anymore."  There was also a category for new learning and another for wonderings.

The first graders brought their learning into writing.  The students made a chart with some of their ideas from their research.  We worked on creating our own sentences instead of copying from our research sources. 

Bats was also a great topic for discussing fact and opinion.  After all our research we did several sorts on bat facts and bat opinions.  We even read an article and highlighted the facts in yellow and the opinions in blue.  Thank you Amy Lemons from Step into Second Grade.  The second graders practiced writing their own facts and opinions in an app called PicCollage.  We are just going batty over all this learning!

Stellaluna

We read the wonderful story Stellaluna in class.  Click on the title to see a fabulous reading of the book by Pamela Reed.  The story was filled with rich vocabulary and we added six new words to our word wizard board.  The new word wizard words are clutched, crooned, adapt, gasped, sighed, and plunged.  We put adapt and plunged into our vocabulary notebooks.

The Arctic Hare adapts to winter by changing his coat.

Stellaluna plunged from the nest.

Be listening for your child to use these new word wizard words.  Ask your child if they can define the words!  We are word wizards!