SECONDSin2nd: 2012

Friday, December 21, 2012

Toontastic

Yesterday our room was filled with a lot more laughter and giggles than normal. Small groups of students collaborated together to create their own cartoon using the Toontastic app on the iPads. Each group worked together to decide on different elements of the story. I really like this app for story creation because it reinforces the different steps of story writing. For example, the use a "Story Arc" that includes conflict, climax, resolution, and more. It gives a brief description as they pass through each part of the "Story Arc." Plus, students can move their characters and give them actual animation, record their voices, add music that fits the mood, watch their cartoon in a movie format, and more.

During centers, students worked around the room at different stations. Each group was able to work with Mr. Carls or myself. Later, groups shared their cartoons using the Ladibug to project them on the SMARTboard. Here's a picture taken with our Ladibug of one scene from each group's cartoon. I would have loved to get an embed code to share them with you, yet that wasn't an option with this app. But, we enjoyed them together as a class.

Predicament at Sea and in Space by

Evan, Jack, and Clayton

Sharing Treasure by

Hannah, Jileena, and Shawn

The Big Adventure by

Hunter, Kamden, Brendan, and Andrew

The Knight Who Saved the Day by

Zachary, Madison, Tailyn, and Torrey

The Magic Kingdom by

Reagan, Kendall, and Kyra

The Mean Monkey by

Kyle, Mathurin, and Joseph

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Merry Math!

Mr. Lienhart helping with shape ornaments for gift giving.

Mr. Eddy helping with creating repeating math patterns through art.

Xtramath.org

Race the teacher for fluency!

Student-created reindeer problem solving activity board.

Torrey's word problem she created for others to solve.

Repeated patterned tree craft.

Review of kinds of quadrilateral and triangles on the gingerbread's buttons.

Measuring length holiday card.... soon it'll be turned into a festive tree.

Kendall and Tailyn making purchases from our winter store.

Madison and Zachary adding up their items.

Kamden and Brendan hard at work!

Evan assisting Jack with adding up items amounts.

Clayton explaining his sum to Shawn.

Joseph and Jordan figuring out costs together.

Mathurin and Kyle comparing totals.

Kyra showing Reagan and Torrey that you can regroup 2 new tens.

Our FAVORITE math app - Make Ten!

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Be a Animal Detective

One of our favorite stories of the year is Around the Pond: Who's Been There? by Lindsay Barrett George. We had the honor of Mrs. Walker's class coming to visit us again. High school students created a special informational text and coloring book to correlate with the animals in the story. The next day we met them at the school pond. 2nd graders located various animal tracks and used their detective skills to figure out what animal had been at the pond. Thank you Mrs. Walker's class! Thank you Peaches and Cream for the cones!

Monday, October 29, 2012

Proof Drawings

Some aspects of our new math series I absolutely LOVE! For example, students need to have a proof drawing when they are problem solving. I understand this is a difficult aspect for those students who excel at mental math, but this assists in setting the groundwork for more complex situations in word problems. Students enjoy being the "teacher" as they show their work on the SMARTboard or under the LadiBug. Our Read It, Draw It, Solve It problems also get our dry erase markers focused on proof drawings. This fall, we are learning how to use different iPad apps to show our work. Here are some samples of the first app we've learned.... ShowMe. This week we will learn how to use EduCreations.

Operation Equation: Geocaching Style

We've been sorting through math word problems galore! Problem solvers took on a cooperative team endeavor during our Autumn Adventure. Three teams embarked with their first clue in hand and found 4 total caches. Students worked together to solve the story problems to determine what number cache they went to next. Operations, number equations, and place value were all reviewed during the event.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Fire Safety Week

Last week we had the privilege of having two special events for Fire Safety Week. We've learned a lot about captions and how they explain what is going on in the picture, photograph, diagram, chart, and more. So, I'm going to let student bloggers explain our photos below!

Evan is wearing a fire man hat. by Kyra

This is a fireman talking about how to not play with fire. by Reagan

Kyle is with his father. by Kendall

This one of our school ambulances.by Mathurin

This is called a generator. by Kyle

This is our class on a truck. by Torrey

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Silly Stories

This theme we've been reading LOTS of silly stories! So, we became authors this time and wrote some silly stories for you. First, we created crazy and creative creatures for our characters using various pipe cleaners. Mrs. Olsen, our classroom volunteer, helped us with our pre-writing story maps. Then we composed our stories. Last, we recorded our stories here for you. We hope you laugh!

Welcome to Our Classroom: Open House Video

Friday, June 8, 2012

GeoBash 2012

As a teacher, it's such "a joy of the job" to see the kids smile and laugh. I cherish all of the special seconds we've had in second grade this year! We had an awesome time for our final geocaching event - GeoBash 2012. Memories... were made today!

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Reading for Information: Animal Reports

Click to view my tale.

During reading intervention, students chose an animal to read and write about. First, they read their books and created a web of facts focusing on appearance, habitat, babies, and diet. Next, they used the information collected on their webs to write a research report. After that they illustrated a picture and recorded their report here for you. The students did an excellent job reading for information.

More Measurement

We've been working a lot on measuring length since it's a focus of our new Common Core Standards. But, the students are still struggling with accuracy and identifying what unit of measurement they are using. During centers this week, students chose objects to measure. This time, they measured length using measuring tapes instead of our little rulers. Students took turns video-taping each other. When we watched the video, we talked about what we noticed.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Math Quiz Show Skype

This week we competed with Mrs. Goodwin's class for our final math meeting together. Students participated in a Math Quiz Show. They all worked very hard calculating and had fun competing. They each took a turn up at the webcam, but everyone else was figuring out the problems as well. Congratulations to Mrs. Goodwin's class! They won by 4 points.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

"Pass It On" Storybird Story

The Best Play Day on Storybird Students worked during centers and collaboratively wrote the story above using Storybird.com. They edited it as a class. We hope you enjoy the story of The Best Play Day! Next week, students will be writing stories on their own in the lab.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The Game of LIFE

Groups of students worked together throughout our little adventure to see what it would be like to experience these real-life kid situations involving finances. They varied from receiving a card from Grandma with $1.00 inside to paying for their art class tuition $15.00.

Each purse/wallet had $56.80 of "play" money to begin. Groups traveled to four different stops and chose a slip to see what life had in store for them. They took turns with the following roles - iPad2 photographer/videographer, money keeper/counter, clipboard recorder, and slip reader. I was impressed with how the teams helped each other out. They talked many of the events through to decide if it should be a deposit or a withdrawal on their piggy bank register. Students also helped each other count the "play" money to add or subtract to their wallets.

After the game aspect, students used the iAllowance app to check their calculations. To conclude the project, students created their iMovie app by editing clips, adding titles, and choosing themes together.

Thank you to Mrs. Meleen, Mr. Hind, and Miss Redman for working with our class to make this project a learning success!

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Valentine's Math Collaboration

A group of elementary teachers collaborated on this project. We used Google Docs to share our ideas, re-think ideas, change the initial plan, and then this is what Mrs. Goodwin's class and our class ended up with. We used Flickr images that are accessible through VoiceThread to inspire student-created word problems with a Valentine's Day and friendship theme. After the student-creators recorded their problems, other students solved them. We LOVE math!

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

ShowMe Some Subtraction Strategies

Today we tried out the ShowMe App to practice our subtraction. Students picked a strategy to solve their problem and used the app to talk through the subtraction problem as they solved it with the pens. Check out the "ShowMes" created by each student below. The different strategies we've discussed are - rewrite vertically, tens/ones, draw a picture, bar model, and decompose.

Today I wasn't just solely impressed with the overall project, but what went on in the rest of the classroom as well. There were many aspects that went smoothly. For example, Mr. Carls came in and called students over to use the iPad2 to one table and I did the same at another table. As students were patiently waiting their turn to try out something new and exciting, they were practicing math around the room. At the SMARTboard students were working together to solve problems using Thinking Blocks, one of our new favorite sites that uses the bar model. Other students were working with Grama Linda on subtraction problems on their dry erase boards. Lastly, Ashley assisted her classmates at the computer station as they solved student-created word problems on a collaborative VoiceThread.

It was great to have our grandparent volunteer, a student-leader assisting, as well as our tech integrator joining our class today, since it gave students the opportunity to work one to one with the iPad2s. Math is so personal. There's so many ways to solve a problem and each child is unique in their thinking. I valued the chance to see my students "show me" their thoughts today.

I'm so glad that Mr. Olson, our middle school math teacher, shared with us this app. It has a LOT of potential for continued use. Plus, since it's super user-friendly, the kids can already use it independently after today's introduction.

Thank you to everyone who made today's "Math Morning" a success. All of the pieces fit together nicely for a purposeful math morning. Thank you to all who helped today! We'd love to hear how you subtract! What's your strategy of choice?

Friday, February 3, 2012

Compare and Contrast with our Italian Friends

We had three different Skype calls over the past three months with a class in Italy. Small groups of students took turns sharing and exchanging ideas about the monthly topic. During November, we shared our favorite foods at school and at home. We learned that many of them like pasta and pesto sauce. Many of us didn't know what pesto was! We both liked clemintines and fruit. During December, we shared about holiday traditions. We learned that many of them celebrate similar to us. But, they make special Christmas cakes or buy them at bakeries. During January, we shared about our favorite winter activities. We were surprised that many of them enjoyed shopping. After talking with their teacher more through email, we learned that many of the Italian parents fear the pollution that's in the air. The city of Milan recommends that the children and elderly stay indoors when the air quality is poor. But, the night we Skyped with them, it snowed and they played outside with their teacher. They made snow angels like we did too! They were also hoping to try maple syrup on snow, just like Riley shared with them during the Skype call. This was a wonderful cultural exchange!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Pumpkins in Winter?

We were viewing another VoiceThread Project of ours and realized we never put this on our blog....
So, here it is. In the fall, we counted and sorted seeds from our pumpkins to practice place value. We sorted and rearranged into tens, ones, and hundreds. WOW! There were a lot more seeds than we predicted.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Stop Motion Meets Addition Strategies....Learning With Pixstop

We've been crunching lots of numbers in math lately. For the past month, we've been working on proficiency in adding two digit numbers. Not only have we explored numerous ways that two 2-digit numbers can be added, but we've experimented with different ways that we hadn't thought of initially. For an extension project, partner groups created a math problem that would involve regrouping. So, they needed to think ahead - the ones would need to add up to a sum greater than 9. Next, they chose a way to add. There are so many options...... Here is what the partner groups chose. They used the pixstop app to take photos and create a stop motion video of the various steps taken to solve the equation. Next, they had to choose how many frames would appear per second for the final video, in other words the speed of the photos. For the first video, we were experimenting with the new app. What's your favorite way to add numbers? Please share your strategy of choice with us!