Aquatic Ed-Ventures

We have been using the ocean theme to learn and practice tons of different reading foundational skills.  The children are loving the fiction and nonfiction books shared during read aloud.  For vocabulary, we learned the word aquatic.  Aquatic means living in or happening in the water.  See if your child can give you some examples and non examples of aquatic.  Here is one smart second grader's picture of aquatic in his vocabulary notebook. The students also used our aquatic books to do some list writing.

In first grade, we also used the aquatic theme to practice an important phonics and spelling skill.  When writers come to tricky words they don't know how to spell, they need to be able to segment the word into the sounds.  We learned a strategy called push and say.  In this strategy, we use the length of our arm to tap out how many sounds are in a word.  For instance, fish has three sounds: /f/- /i/- /sh/.



After we figure out how many sounds in the word, we make that many boxes.  Then, the writers figure out what letters to add to the boxes.  Watch this awesome speller segment the sounds of shell and push the letters to the correct boxes.



After we practiced segmenting and pushing up several different words together, the students set to work independently.  The children had to pick four different aquatic animals to segment and spell.  The students were excellent and hearing the sounds in words.  Last, but not least, we published our own books about Aquatic Animals.  We used the tricky words that we figured out how to spell in our books.  Besides practicing segmenting tricky words, the students also got practice writing sentences.  Students had to remember to begin sentences with a capital letter, use spaces between words, and end with proper punctuation.  What fantastic writers!

Second graders have also been experiencing some "Aquatic Ed-ventures" in writing.  Their task has been to create an informational poster based on research of an aquatic animal of their choosing.  We have gotten articles from World Book, an online encyclopedia Eagle Cliffs students have access to.  See the menu button bar at the top of the blog to access this resource at home. We have also checked out nonfiction books from libraries all around town to collect information on their unique animal choices.  Thanks so much for the extra help, Mrs. Jensen.  So far, the students have researched their animals and taken notes in a fact file.


The students also practiced writing interesting leads for their pieces.  We learned three different types of leads: a statement, a question, or an exclamation.  Check out a couple examples.
Zap!  Look out for the stingray.  A stingray's zap can be as poisonous as a snakebite.
What floats, stings, and has no bones or heart?  It's a jellyfish!
I just can't wait to read the rest of their pieces.  In this project, besides research and writing, the students have to include five nonfiction text features.  So far, we have photos, captions, and a headline. We also decided to add a diagram.  To make their diagrams, the student used the iPad and the app Osmo Masterpiece to draw their animals.  The drawings are spectacular.  We will finish labeling our diagrams, writing our facts, and putting it all together on the poster this next week.  Stay tuned.