New iPads and Christmas Art

So our final 10 iPads came in today which brought our total to 15, and so naturally I used them with my class as soon as they were all ready to go! We had so much fun, though they were a little sad they had to share! It was so nice to share new technology with some of them but it didn't surprise me that most of them knew how to use it already. One comment I heard, was "oh, this is just like a big iPhone" which is so funny to me because that is what I said as a reason for me not to buy my own personal one! So we checked out some of the apps, and they practiced some math skills. The apps we used were, Splash Math: Grade 2, Penguin Jump, Motion Math Hungry Fish, Kaleidoscope Drawing Pad (which is pretty cool but not "educational" per se) and Chicktionary which was hard for them.

We also started one of our many Christmas art projects, our paper nativity scenes. These are always cute, and easy and this is the first year no one drew faces on Mary, Joseph or Baby Jesus. So that was a plus! They did however, use the scraps of paper to make mustaches and beards, and tape them onto their faces and then asked to be called Mr.Beard (who is out PE specialist). So it was a typical Friday in Grade 2!!

Student Writing

I love reading students' writing. Here are some gems, the first batch is our "triple scoop words" writing project, the second is our simile project and the last are our rendition of the story, "Never Take A Shark to the Dentist" by Judi Barrett

Pop Art

We are starting our unit on Pop Art as made famous by Andy Warhol. We have completed one project and are in the midst of our second. I love this unit because the projects are so colourful! Here is our POP art ( I love me a good play on words!) 

 I found this project on Pinterest (of course) and loved the graphic nature and the simplicity. I found a picture of a coke bottle online, printed it in greyscale on regular photocopy paper, cropped the paper a bit so there was not as much to colour, and the kids did the rest!

Our second project is handprints (another pinteresting idea) and we're not all done yet, but they are really taking shape.

Students trace their hands 4 times and colour their hands and backgrounds with pencil crayon or crayon in different colours (you could do complimentary colours). Then I paint their hand with black tempera paint and they "stamp" their hands on top of the coloured hands.

On a side note, I love having a coloured wall to hand art on, so much better than white, (imho).

Fall Writing and Art

This week we made Q-tip trees and we wrote a poem on Fall. It was a cute little project and looks great. I was very happy with some of the words and ideas that the kids shared about what Fall looks like, sounds like, feels like, and smells like and what they love about Fall. They loved the foam and felt stickers I got on sale at Michaels! haha

Triple Scoop Words

So this week I went to an Adrienne Gear workshop. She is a teacher/Language Specialist from the Vancouver School District. She is an amazing speaker and has a great reading and writing program. I have been using many of her ideas over the past couple years, but not as consistently as I should would like to. One of the biggest ideas I got from her this time, was the two overarching goals she has for her students' writing. She explains that good writers keep their reader interested and to write in such a way as to not confuse them..She has several writing techniques that teach kids how to engage their reader, and to keep their writing organized. In my class we will be talking about these techniques over the course of the year and putting them into practice as much as possible. This week we started talking about the writing technique of triple scoop words. One way that writers keep their readers engaged is by choosing interesting words that convey ideas and meaning more effectively than more simple words. We read some books, in particular, Max's Castle by Kate Banks which is a great book, and talked about what makes a word a triple scooper. I had them think about ice cream and how getting one scoop of ice cream is ok, but it doesn't make you excited or happy, it doesn't leave you satisfied, but if you got three giant scoops of ice cream with toppings you are way more excited and are totally satisfied with the amount of ice cream you got. The same goes with words in your writing, you can say something is fun, but the word fun is a little boring, it doesn't make the reader want to read more. However the word entertaining or engaging or stupendous would be much more interesting. So we went through a bunch of single scoop words and came up with synonyms for those words (for older kids a Thesaurus would be a great tool to use), and wrote them down on a piece of paper to have for future reference. I was amazed at some of the words they were able to come up with.

Triple Scoop Words

The next day we did a fun little project that showcased some of our triple scoop words.

Most of the students understood the concept of putting the single scoop word on the bottom and the better words on the top....as you can see not everyone listened...... ;)
Next week we will be putting our triple scoop words into action when we write about emotions (because good writers want their readers to connect to their writing). We'll see how it goes....

Addition Tic Tac Toe

Today we played Addition Tic Tac Toe. The kids loved it! They had this game board found here, bingo chips, and a double 10 sided (decahedron) die. 

They roll the die, add the two numbers together, find the sum anywhere on the board and place their chip. They play on all the tic tac toe boards simultaneously and try to get three chips in a row. The student has the most three is a rows, wins the game.

Part, Part, Whole

We talked about Part Part Whole (PPW) in Math this week. We started with the fun paper plates that have a large section and then two smaller sections. These added interest and engagement.

The students used bingo chips as counters and then we either started with the whole number and one part and had to figure out what the other part was (ex. 16 and 8, missing part is 8) or we started with two parts and had to make the whole (ex.7 and 3 whole 10). Students had an easy time putting parts together, but it was a little more tricky doing the whole and part questions.

We then did a pencil and paper activity to put numbers to the concept, and this was more tricky. Some started to make the connection between part/whole and subtraction and part/part and addition. I found a great blog post on PPW at Mrs. T's First Grade Class used her worksheets for this part of the lesson. We also read, "Ready, Set, Hop!" and put the equations into a blank PPW worksheet. The students really enjoyed this and they really wanted to find out if Moe or Marty won! I love being able to incorporate Language Arts into Math whenever possible! We didn't fill up the whole sheet so we will look at another book tomorrow and see if we can make some more PPW equations to finish the page.

We will continue to work on this concept as I think that it will help them with subtraction and addition facts. I have never taught this concept in this way, so I wonder how impactful it will be, if at all.

Here is a video I found, explaining number bonds, which we talked about in relation to PPW

Ten Frames

I went to a workshop last week on addition and so of course I put the things I learned into practice this week. ;) We started with ten frames. First I handed out large versions of the ten frames I found on this awesome site (they have so many blackline masters for math, it's very exciting!!) and the students had to find their partner. Their partner was the student that completed them (made 10). They really enjoyed this activity and my high energy boys got to move around. Then we played Terrific 10 Snake where they took turns making pairs and the person who finds the last pair wins. One person starts (and wins, but the kids don't know that) and  puts a bingo chip on two circles that add to 10 (1+9, 2+8 etc). Then their partner finds two circles that makes a pair and puts their coloured bingo chip on those two circles. They go back and forth until the last pairing is made. Then comes the next level!

The next level of this game is to see who can make the longest section of the snake in their color bingo chips. This is where strategy comes in finding pairs that will give you a bigger section of the snake while blocking your opponent from doing the same. This was too hard for some kids, but with more practice maybe they will handle it better. 

We also played ten frame memory with these mini ten frames I found on the workshop presenter's blog (it's a great blog by the way!) I printed them on card-stock, and some fabulous moms and my SEA cut them out for me! One person starts by flipping two cards over, if the cards make 10 they get to keep them, if they don't, they must flip them back over and their partner tries to find 10. (The full ten frame cards will be used later when talking about adding 10 to a number..)

At first my students had trouble working with ten frames, but they are starting to see the pairs more quickly. 

We also used this great "learning tool"online during our first computer block this year. They really seemed to enjoy playing this game and collecting points and they were ecstatic to play anything on the computer. Hello MOTIVATION!!

They enjoyed using the stars or apples instead of the circles too! The different games on the side "bump up" the difficulty which was good for my more capable students. The students also work with partners during our computer period, so they were able to help each other which is good for my strugglers! 

I think a few more days with ten frames and we can move on to doubles!

A Language and Art Activity

Here are two projects we completed this week.

First our "Not a Box" creations based on the book Not a Box by Antoinette Portis

After reading the book, the students chose a pose they liked and used their imagination to turn the box into something that was "not a box"

We also made apple collages, where the kids trace apples onto a paper, overlapping the apples, and then colour in the spaces with pastel. They turned out really nice. Pictures of completed projects to come, but here is one that was in progress.