Balls and ramps

We have had so much fun investigating force and motion.  As you will see in the first several photos, we began by exploring.  Our next step was to conduct experiments in which we wrote "lab reports."  Our reports had these components: question, hypothesis, materials, procedure, data, claim, evidence and reasoning.  We are getting ready for a final challenge.

Principal guest reader

We are studying about patterns and cycles of the moon and the stars.  This study has led us to wonder about space exploration.  We invited Mr. Miller, our middle school principal, to explain more about this topic to us.  He wore his NASA uniform and brought in models of space craft.  Mr. Miller's expertise and enthusiasm for this topic was contagious.  We have many books in the classroom about space exploration that we are now reading.

St. Patrick's Day

Thank you to the Curley family for sharing your Irish culture with us. We enjoyed the slide show, the stories and the 4 leaf clover cake!

Hands On Nature: water

For Hands On Nature in March we investigated the amazing properties of water.  We also wrote about our discoveries, practicing writing topic sentences and using transition words, such as: first, secondly, also, for example.

Many Strategies

So many strategies to solve this problem 264 + 372 = ?  
Children in 2nd grade are using strategies based in their understanding of place value to add 2 and 3 digit numbers.  (They will use the conventional algorithm, that you may be more familiar with, by the end of 3rd grade.)

Celebrating Dr. Seuss's Birthday

Every March 2nd, our school celebrates Dr. Seuss's birthday, as part of a nationwide celebration called Read Across America!  (Due to the snow day this year, we celebrated a day later.)  For our celebration, we read a newly discovered Dr. Seuss book called, What Pet Shall I Get?  We made crowns featuring pets that we wish we would get.  We read as many Dr. Seuss books as we could.  We also attended a school assembly to join with all the K- 5 classes to celebrate.  And, finally, we had a guest reader, Joey Adams,  who is a 3rd grade teacher at our school.

Flynn Arts Workshop

A Flynn Arts teacher came to our classroom to lead a workshop to prepare us to see MathDance at the Flynn Theater.  We explored ideas of mirror and rotational symmetry.  We worked with a partner to create a short dance sequence that we performed for each other.  Our 8th grade volunteer, Gabby, joined us.  (Since our workshop, the show has been changed to MatheMagic, due to the cancelation of the original performance.)