Remember to Read!!!

Here are some 2012 fun facts from Race to Read's website:

1 - In 2012, elementary schools in Moretown, Warren, Braintree, Fayston, Williamstown, Roxbury, and Waitsfield participated in Race to Read. In 2013, Waterbury will be added to this list! :)

2 - In those seven schools, over 5,000 books were read specifically for the challenge!

3 - Williamstown Elementary had a 71% completion rate. That means that almost 3/4 of the entire school read 15 books. Williamstown was also the LARGEST school!

4 - The most popular book author was Dr. Seuss. His books were read almost 200 times.

5 - Over 300 children signed the hood of Troy Kingsbury's #39 Mustang race car!

Remember - Race to Read papers are due May 3rd!!!
Encourage your child to read every day so s/he can earn this unique and exciting experience!

Tech Teachers

The fourth graders in Mrs. Burbank's class have been (and will be) teaching our class how to do various tasks on the computer. Each second grader has a fourth grade mentor. They are learning how to save, change fonts, make text boxes, draw, save, import photos, etc. We will be using these skills on our own in a few weeks to create nonfiction animal books (with our very own photographs!)

So far, this has been an incredible process. All of the kids (second graders and fourth graders) have been embracing the experience. They're all teaching each other different lessons (how to be an effective teacher, being patient, how to use the computer, etc). Half of our class and half of Mrs. Burbank's class were in the computer lab, while others were in Mrs. Burbank's room with the portable lab. Next time we meet, we'll switch so we all have an opportunity to work with the desktop computers and the laptops.

Our class talked a lot about why we were looking forward to working with fourth graders and we talked again afterwards about why they enjoyed it. Their thoughts were, as always, insightful and interesting. Some shared that they were excited to have a new friend to talk to. Some shared that they liked working with their partners because they got a lot of help and were very similar to their partners. ASK your child about his/her learning adventures with the fourth graders. 

What did you learn?

 

Stay tuned for more video interviews about our experiences, photographs, and updates on our adventures with technology! :)

Pinching Paper Clips

Last week, we had a real math dilemma...We were just about to start a "pinching paper clips" activity. We had 10 boxes of paper clips, wrapped in plastic. Each box said "100 paper clips." We pinched some paper clips out of a box and then wrote and solved some equations to see how many we still had in the box. Once we solved the equations, we checked our work by counting the paper clips left in the box. Did we come up with the same number...to all of our surprise, no!

We weren't sure if our math was incorrect, so we went back and checked our answer. Then we realized that maybe we didn't start with 100 paper clips. We talked about how we could prove it and we decided to count the paper clips. After we grouped the paper clips by 10s we realized we had 102 paper clips.

So these marvelous mathematicians decided that we should check all of the boxes to make sure they had 100. It is a good thing we checked because we ended up with boxes containing 98-102 paper clips.

Each box needed 100 paper clips, so these smarties started figuring out what to do with their extra paper clips. One group had 102 so they gave 2 paper clips to the group with 98. Another group had 99 so they took 1 from the group with 101. There were a lot of trades made and in the end, we ended up with 10 boxes...100 paper clips in each.

We then made a long number string and saw that:

100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 = 1000

and

100 + 100 + 102 + 101 + 100 + 98 + 102 + 99 + 99 + 99 = 1000.

What was the best thing about this math discovery? The kids were so amazed that none of this was planned and that mathy moments can pop up and surprise us!

Have you had any surprising mathy moments this vacation?

Portable Computer Lab

Our researchers have been hard at work using books, articles, and internet resources to learn more about their animals! We used the portable computer lab to investigate our animals' life cycles and find fun facts. Then we got to play games and explore the other parts of PebbleGo!

Have you heard? We are going to begin working with Mrs. Burbank's fourth graders on Monday to help us learn some skills on the computer. Students were partnered up so we (the second graders) can be mentored by the 4th graders! We're going to be using KidPix to design our own nonfiction books (about our animals). We had a free-explore time on Friday with KidPix so on Monday, we'll be ready for work! Keep asking your scientific journalists about their books, working with Mrs. Burbank's class, and research on their animals...

1-2 Performance

CONGRATULATIONS to our 1st and 2nd graders! The performance was amazing. A big thanks to the specials teachers for having such a great vision for our performance and working with our kids to put this concert together.

Photo By: Ms. Hutchinson (Thank you so much!)

Animal Study

We are researching animals! Students were so excited to hear that they were  choosing the animal they would learn about. With 18 different animals and a lot of excitement, we began our unit by making and illustrating folders to hold all of our resources and work.

We began reading about our animals this week and learned how to take notes - in our own words! So far, we've learned about what physical characteristics, diet, and habitat mean. We also researched and discovered what our own animals' habitat, characteristics, and diet are. There was a lot of excitement as students began discovering new information!

As part of learning about nonfiction and our animals, we went to the computer lab to explore PebbleGo, a nonfiction text website. These scientists LOVED exploring this website. They watched video clips, listened to audio of animals, and read about different animals. They even got to read about different habitats and classifications. This was a free explore time so we'll be working with PebbleGo again this week to specifically investigate our animals.

Nonfiction Texts

We dove into a fantastic adventure with nonfiction last week! We have been exploring nonfiction using magazine articles, books, and online resources. We used our projector to visit some interactive nonfiction book and magazine websites. We have also been working with partners to practice asking questions, answering questions using evidence from the text, and playing "The Heading Game." ASK your child more about their nonfiction exploration!

Fractions!

We have been investigating fractions! First, we folded some paper into fourths. We all had different ways of folding our papers into four equal parts, so the question was: 

"Someone folded the paper into four squares, someone else folded the paper into four rectangles, another person folded the paper into four triangles. Are the square-shaped, rectangular, and triangular fourths the same size? Prove your thinking."

Lining up the creases and cutting those triangle pieces off.

What can you do with those cut-off triangular pieces?

Testing materials to measure. 

Do we have to use the same material to measure both papers?

 Using clay and rulers to measure the area of a space.

Are these materials effective for measuring and comparing?

At the end of this unit, we made fraction flags! We colored in different fractions of our flags and put them on the posters that represented the flags' fractions. We had seven posters that represented: 1/2 and 1/2, 2/4 and 2/4, 1/4 and 3/4, 1/4 and 1/4 and 1/4 and 1/4, 1/4 and 1/4 and 2/4, 1/3 and 1/3 and 1/3, 1/3 and 2/3. Then we shared and discussed what we noticed about each poster.