Pumpkin Day!

Peaceful, Precious
Understandable, Useful, Unique
Mushy, Mute, Magical
Play guts, Polite, Pretty
Kind, Knife to cut
Icky, Important, Interesting
Natural resource, Needs water, sunlight, soil

Fiction story... CREEPY!

Loving all the similes though!

Sweet Will brought me a cookie and candy!! 

Listening to our fiction stories. 

Look at all the seeds we got! So many man made resources can be made from these guys.

Measuring our pumpkin's height.

(We also learned what the word circumference means!)

Good friends working on their writing. 

Writing physical properties of the pumpkin. 

We went through all the ingredients of pumpkin pie and went through where all them originate. 

All from NATURAL resources!!

PYP Sharing the Planet

I love The Giving Tree. For those of you who don't have your own copy... there's a really nice narration on youtube.
There's also a 25 minute video of The Lorax, which I didn't watch because it was so long but next indoor recess, that's definitely what we'll watch!

Check out our videos about natural resources.

Today we talked about the renewable resource, WATER.

Here's the adorable water song that I love:

The Water Cycle – Sung to the tune of O’ My Darling

Evaporation

Condensation

Precipitation on my head

Accumulation

Water Cycle………………

Now I start it all again!

Appropriately, today has been rainy so I'm thinking that for indoor recess, we need to watch the Magic School Bus episode "Wet All Over"

Here's an adorable little Tree poem.

Trees

by Harry Behn

Trees are the kindest things I know,
They do no harm, they simply grow
And spread a shade for sleepy cows,
And gather birds among their bows.

They give us fruit in leaves above,
And wood to make our houses of,
And leaves to burn on Halloween
And in the Spring new buds of green.

They are first when day's begun
To tough the beams of morning sun,
They are the last to hold the light
When evening changes into night.

And when a moon floats on the sky
They hum a drowsy lullaby
Of sleepy children long ago...
Trees are the kindest things I know.

Mason Moves Away is a great resource for talking about environment changes.

Update

Lots of exciting things happening in my classroom.

First of all, we had our first Principal's Pride yesterday. My four Principal Pride kiddos were: Lucy, Will, Mike, and Travis. Congratulations friends!!

In math we finished up our week about time...

Here are two friends on "hat day" working on their TIME Bingo.

And have started our $ MONEY $ unit. Money is usually something that is pretty fun for the kids and it's definitely something they all should have schema for!

I highly recommend reading The Coin Counting Book for introducing the money unit. It talks about the different ways to use different coins to get the same amount.

I'm doing it more as an interactive activity than a plain read aloud.

In Science/PYP we're continuing our Sharing The Planet unit. I love talking about resources and saving the planet. Parents, be warned, your child should be coming home and demanding that ya'll recycle!
We watched an America The Beautiful video and talked about the different natural resources we saw, and what we use those resources to make.

In Writing we have finished up our first editing/publishing round and have moved on to FICTION. I am so excited that Texas is including fiction writing for second graders. It's so much fun to see what creative stories they come up with!
We're still working on using SPARKLE words and dialogue.

In Reading we're ending our fiction unit and reviewing the words we've learned:

• character
• setting
• author
• persuade
• metacognition
• schema
• inference
• prediction
• connection

Here's some pictures from our MEDIA unit.

Here we talked about personification of the Gatorade.

To get your own media booklet... Click Here!

In Ms. Dower's teaching life, things are a little bit nuts with parent conferences and report cards. 

I cannot seem to do a conference shorter than 45 minutes unless my next conference is knocking at the door. I have to much to share! 

I am so proud of my kids and all their hard work!

Bats

Next week is Halloween!
We're not allowed to dress up at my school because not everyone celebrates Halloween. I totally support that, but I also wanted to have some extra fun activities.

So that week we'll be learning about BATS.

We also will also watch The Magic School Bus, Going Batty. 

We'll also be making a Venn Diagram after reading Stellaluna to compare Bats and Birds.

Bullying

Today our wonderful counselor came in to talk about bullying and being an "upstander" instead of standing by and being a bystander.

First we reviewed the book, One by Kathryn Otoshi. This book is awesome!

The amazon description: Blue is a quiet color. Red’s a hothead who likes to pick on Blue. Yellow, Orange, Green, and Purple don’t like what they see, but what can they do? When no one speaks up, things get out of hand — until One comes along and shows all the colors how to stand up, stand together, and count. As budding young readers learn about numbers, counting, and primary and secondary colors, they also learn about accepting each other's differences and how it sometimes just takes one voice to make everyone count.


This is a great video. The author reads the story as a class interprets it!
Here's another video of the same book.

Then we talked about bullying.
It is repeated, it is intentional, and it is an uneven division of power.

Then we read the book Say Something.

I always enjoy classroom community building activities.

These lessons will be useful their whole lives! 

PYP Sharing the Planet

Our new unit for PYP (The IB program) is:
Sharing the Planet.

Our central idea is: Living things share natural resources. 

The first activity I did was to hand out a snack to only some of my students. The ones that I skipped were left saying, "What about me!?"
Then we talked about how that felt (and I gave everyone snack).

We defined our our words.
Resource- something you can use
Natural resource- from nature
Manmade resource- humans made or changed it.

We wrote examples of natural resources and manmade resources on sticky notes and talked about the difference.

We watched a video from United Streaming called Learning About Natural Resources. 

This video explained the difference between 3 types of natural resources.

Inexhaustible Natural Resource- Cannot be used up, will always be available (air, sun)

Renewable Natural Resource- Can be used over and over again (trees, soil)

Nonrenewable Natural Resource- Cannot be made again in our lifetime (coal, gas)

Here's a little youtube video talking about the difference between man made and natural resources. 

This is a great article about the causes and effects of pollution. 


Video about the 3R's.


Video about pollution.

Here's a good website for suggestions of activities go to along with the Berenstein Bears book about pollution.

Here's another website about pollution.

Media

We didn't get to the media lesson I wanted to today, but we went to the library and did a great lesson there!

Our librarian knew we were doing media so she had a lesson that tied in perfectly.

The kiddos were able to go to a website and make their own cereal box design! 

It's a really cool website and it has lots of different media lesson ideas.Click on the picture below. 

Also, next week is RED RIBBON WEEK!

Science Writing

I had the kiddos pretend to be a state of matter that is going to change into another state of matter. I'm really trying to be more creative in my assignments. This was so much more engaging than having the kids just write about matter. (Shout out to Ms. Vechan for the ideas)

Their writings was AWESOME.
Here are a few examples:

I am chocolate. My state of matter is a solid and I've been wanting to be a gas but I cannot be a gas because I'm solid. And wait there's a hand reaching for me. Ahhhh! Hand is putting me out to melt. Ahhh! Four minutes later in the Texas sun, I am a liquid and I didn't want to be a liquid. The reason I do not want to be a liquid is because I don't want to be shapeless.
-Beck

I am a Hershey's chocolate bar on the window. Emilee just put me outside. I am as hard as a rock. I don't want to be a liquid. Noooo! I started to melt. Yay! I like being a liquid and I scream yay all day. I like being a liquid... I like wiggling. I like warming. I like being goey and wet.
-Emilee

I am hot chocolate. My state of matter is liquid. I flow. I don't break. I take the shape of a container. I wiggle. I have waves. The evil Rachael takes me and puts me in the freezer. I am so terrified. I don't want to become a solid. They break! Finally I am out, but I am a solid.
-Caelyn

I am rootbeer. My state of matter is liquid. But Sarah is going to put me in the freezer. After that she is going to experiment me. I will be frozen and can't jiggle or pour. I am terrified and scared and sad. I like when people pour me and put me in cups and drink me and get me from the refrigerator.
-Rachael

I am chocolate and my state of matter is a solid. Will is about to put me outside. Then I will melt. I never been a liquid. I got an idea, I can escape but how? He is a giant. No. No! He is putting me outside. I have to melt into a liquid. It is the end! I never can be a solid unless I get into the freezer. I need to wait for Will to put me in the freezer. The end.
-Raghav

Hi. I am a chocolate bar. My state of matter is solid. I've always wanted to be a liquid. I wake up still my normal self. Then all of a sudden, someone picked me up and threw me into the bathroom. I bumped on the solid toilet, slid onto the floor and into a dog's mouth. Then dog threw me onto the couch. I bounced off into the oven with a casserole. I was terrified. I had to take a breath I couldn't because the oven already started. I melted and melted! It hurt a little but out popped the casserole and me. I was a liquid. Hooray! I shouted. It was saddest day of my life and the happiest day of my life.
-Sarah

I am water. My state of matter is liquid but then Will was walking towards me and put me in fire! And started to evaporate up up to space. I  can't breath in space. Ahhh! I'm going to die for my life. Nooo! EEEEEk! By myself I am going in the sun. I can't stop. Noooo. I'm scared. No, I'm going in now Ahhhh.
-Nehan

Whirly Gigs

Materials:
Note cards
Scissors
Tape

This activity is to show kiddos how changing shapes can result in a change in how an object moves.
We connect this to why things are built the way they are, and what function it serves.

Cut down the middle (just half way).

Fold both to the same side.

Fold in half and separate the "wings"

Give it to the kiddos and let them experiment!

Then we wrote our hypothesis about what would happen if we cut off the wings.

Emilee was such a bucket filler by helping Lucy write. 

We cut off the wings.

We wrote about what happened after we cut off the wings!

Symmetry

Today in science we talked about SYMMETRY.
We talked about faces being symmetrical.

There is a great FREE power point that I used from Teachers Pay Teachers, to download that... click here.

It talks about horizontal symmetry, vertical symmetry, and gave great visuals.

We made snowflakes and talked about the different lines of symmetry in snowflakes as we rotated them. Lots of fun and a great hands on activity!

Here are some other symmetry activities...

Shout out to all my families that helped by contributing dry erase markers!!

Technology in the classroom

Yesterday at our staff development meeting, we had some discussion about incorporating technology into the classroom.
There are so many different resources, but many of time take some time, and learning to figure out!
Today during my planning time I went to one of the suggested websites.
It's awesome and FREE!

It's Marvel. 
Sign up (for free!) and you can make your own super heroes and comic strips.

I made this very simple one for inferring...

At some point, I'd love my kiddos to make their own comics. Sounds like a "Fun Friday" activity to me!!

Here is the list of websites that were handed out yesterday:

A still shot of a comic strip page that select and place your words in the speech bubbles.

http://marvel.com/games/play/34/create_your_own_comic

Create a fun video with your voice, or one of theirs, and have background music, all for free!

http://goanimate.com

This is so cool and FREE!  You can “capture” images or videos, make comments… and share with one or many.

www.techsmith.com/tutorial-jing.html

You can “build a wall” where kids can place sticky note comments.

This could be used for a unit.

Kids can ask or answer questions.

They can share ideas…

This could be their ticket out the door…

http://padlet.com

Photos and voice of the teacher; embed other elements like a power point presentation….

It could be a way to introduce yourself to your new kids…

https://voicethread.com

Math Interactive

Pinterest Classroom

I always love going into other people's classrooms/looking at teaching blogs and stealing  borrowing ideas. 

My dear friend came into my room the other day and called it a "Pinterest Room." I beamed with pride. 

We spend so much time in my classroom and I want it to look like home! 

(I also love this blog entry from All Students Can Shine if you're looking for more organization/decor)

My writing board, complete with a word wall. 

My reading wall, with CAFE and all our important vocabulary words for this year. 

My rocking chair (with my buckets behind me)

I made this the summer after I graduated. I love it!

My word work choices.

Book boxes!! 

Classroom Jobs. 

PYP area.

Student work on display.

Class schedule. 

Clip chart.

Math board.

Voice Levels. 

Their mailboxes.

Notes from home and needs to be graded.

My reading tree!

File cabinets don't have to be ugly.

My hot pink stool. $15 at Target.

All free space is utilized.

Student computers and the beginning of our science board.

My files. 

Teacher area. I wanted to clean it up before I took the picture but I thought it was important to reflect what it actually looks like. I do my small groups here. 

My pink fridge! I keep a folder on each kiddo and I keep it behind my teachers desk.

It is so important to document so I am constantly collecting student work to put in the folders, writing sticky notes of things I'm observing, etc. 

The lunch box on top was actually a gift from one of my students last year. I am always loosing my lunch box so it was a very thoughtful gift. 

98% of the things on my walls are things I made and you can buy it all here.