Busy Mathematicians

Learning about place value by grouping beans by 10's to figure out how many all together

We have been focusing on these math concepts:

Place value: Making groups of tens to count into the hundreds
We estimated and then counted how many beans were in a bag of kidney beans.  In the picture above, the papers represent the 100's, 10's and 1's places.  As beans were grouped by tens in small cups, they were then combined into containers of 100.  We have also solved riddles to practice place value such as: I have 2 tens and 5 ones.  Who am I?  And, more challenging:  If you gave me 2 more tens, I would be 80.  Who am I?

Finding the difference between quantities through comparing and subtracting
We have estimated how many scoops of a cup it would take to get 50 beans.  Then we counted our estimate by grouping the beans by 10's.  We compared if we scooped greater than or less than 50.  Finally we wrote an equation to show our work.  So if we scooped 68, our equation would be 68-50=18.  We found out that there are 18 more beans in our estimate than 50.  18 is the difference.

Class Community

Practicing 'debugging' with Ms. Wideman

Our Class Rules

A very important part of our first 6 weeks of school is creating a class community.  When children feel secure in their class, they are more willing to try new activities to further their learning. 

We create class community in a variety of ways:

• Getting to know each other through our "About Me" unit
• Sharing our hopes and dreams for the year
• Creating our class rules together  (In case you'd like to read the details, from above, our rules state: be safe, treat others how you would like to be treated, respect the environment around you, try your best)
• Practicing respectful ways to solve social problems (We call this "debugging" and recently sent home a sheet that gives ideas for practicing.)
• Playing games, having fun and enjoying each other's company

Opinion Writing, Oreo Style!

Opinion writing is one of the writing genres that we teach second graders. It is a great way to start off the year because it lends itself to many writing pieces and children this age have many opinions!

We teach them how to write a structured paragraph including a focus statement (their opinion), supporting details (why they feel that way) and a conclusion.

Last week we used an Oreo cookie to model this process.  Please visit our student blogs with your child to see how we did this. Have them teach the method to you. Ask them about the two opinion pieces we have written so far. It was a fun way to learn a life-long skill!

Great Parenting Article

A friend recently shared this article with me and I just had to pass it along. I found it so moving. It is especially appropriate at this time of year when many of our children are participating in fall sports.

Parenting Article

Student Helpers in Our Classroom

This fall we have 2 student helpers in our classroom.  Natalie is a UVM student who is majoring in elementary education with a concentration in Spanish.  She is with us every Thursday morning.  With assistance, she will teach 2-3 lessons this fall.

  Nate is an SCS middle school student who helps us out each Thursday afternoon as part of his community service project for school. It's a treat to see Nate helping the 2nd grade students since he was once a 2nd grade student in our class.  Nate has been particularly helpful in the computer lab as we work on our blogs.  The children have been very welcoming to both of these students.

Eric Carle Book Project

We have been having so much fun with our author study of Eric Carle. He is an amazing author and illustrator! We spent a lot of time reading his books and talking about all the things we noticed about the author's craft. Next, we made our own paper using lots of different texture techniques. We then used that paper to create gorgeous collage pictures for our very own book inspired by the one and only...Eric Carle.

Take a peek at the process in our slideshow. Our completed books will be waiting for you at curriculum night!

Eric Carle Book Project

Math

Hello Kaleidoscope Families,
Ask your children about what they have been learning in math.
Here are some talking points and a picture of our work to begin the discussion:
Beetle glyphs
Categories
Picture Graph
Bar graph
Greater than and less than
Difference