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.)

Valentine's Celebration

We had so much fun giving and receiving Valentine's.  Ms. Beaumont, our principal, visited us and took our picture as we wore our "chocolate mustaches," created by one of our classmates.  (Please see the SCS Blog to view the photo.) We ended our celebration by reading the book, "Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch."  We figured out that the message the author was telling us with the story is to treat others with love and kindness and then you will also be treated this way.

Sharing Our Movies

We used the app Shadow Puppet to create mini-movies.  Our movies were made to provide evidence for this claim: animals have different body parts in order to survive.  We had fun sharing our final product with our classmates and our 8th grade helper, Gabby.

Learning About Empathy

We had two second grade students visit our class to teach us about empathy, feeling what another person feels.  We listened to a story to figure out times that a character was empathetic in the story.  Then we discussed times that we had been empathetic or seen someone act empathetically.  Our discussion continued to explore what can happen when a person is empathetic in our classroom.  Those feelings of understanding and thoughtfulness can ripple across the community of learners in our classroom and strengthen our support of each other. We will keep noticing and practicing empathy.

100th Day of School

We enjoyed several fun activities on the 100th day of school.  Students shared posters of 100.  Zero the Hero visited our team and read us a story about the power of 0.  We wrote about how we would spend $100.  Responses ranged from the ultimate candy shopping spree at the Shelburne Country Store, to getting a parrot, to helping the homeless and saving for college.  We used a code of A=1, B=2, C=3 etc. to find out how close to 100 was the spelling of our first and last names.  We made our own picture book with the theme of 100: I could eat 100 . . . ., My parents have told me 100 times to . . . . In 100 years .  . . . .  Since we have been using numbers in the 100's during math, we made a chain of 100 tens to find out how big 1000 is.  We found out that our chain went all the way down our hallway and around the corner to the copy room.