Queens Museum

Yesterday we went to the Queens Museum to see the Panorama of the City of New York.  It was a great experience to see such a beautiful scale model of all five boroughs.  We could really get a great sense of the size of each borough and the geography of our city.  If you've never been, check it out!

After seeing the panorama, we went to a workshop where we created city blocks of our own.  We discussed that much like the panorama is a model, we were creating models.  We said that model was a smaller version of a real thing that also usually used different materials than the real thing.  We also thought about the colors the creators of the panorama used (green for parks, blue for water, white/yellow for sand) and created a city block using lots of materials.  We worked really hard on our great models!

Yoga

Today we had a special yoga session!  We peacefully gathered our thoughts, stretched our bodies, and calmed our breathing this afternoon.  It was a great way to end our day together.

Reading Olympics

Yesterday packets for the Reading Olympics went home.  Please read through the information with your child and keep both the form and the envelope in a safe place over the next few weeks.  Students in second grade have the option of either reading 10 different books in the month of March or reading for 10 hours (more appropriate, perhaps, for longer chapter books).  Ask family and friends to pledge to your Reading Olympics sheet.  The suggested amount is at least $1 per book/hour.  Envelopes with the completed forms (regardless of the money) will be collected on Friday, April 4th.  Over the last few years, we have raised a lot of money for our drama, art, and music programs at EVCS.  Happy reading!

Storyboards

We are using storyboards to plan out our fairy tales in writing workshop.  Our stories are filling up with details as we plan out the problems our main character will face.

Writing Fairytales

This week we began a new unit in writing - fairytales!  We knew lots of things about fairytales before we even started the unit!  We have read lots and lots of Roald Dahl fairytales throughout the year already - we will continue this author study throughout the year - and we have begun reading many other fairytales as well.  Yesterday we began observing fairytales through the lense of writers - what are craft moves we see fairytale authors making, what are common themes in fairytales, how are many fairytales similar or alike?  We listed lots and lots of observations, first independently and then as a class.

Today we did an on-demand fairytale.  We were asked to "show what we know" about fairytale writing already.  We wrote for 40-straight minutes, with lots of great stories being created.  These stories will be assessed using the end-of-unit rubric so that everyone knows what attributes of great narrative writing or outstanding fairytale writing we need to work on throughout the next few weeks.  This unit is sure to be fun!

Time Traveling to see Habitats

On Monday we time-traveled to the year 1514.  We went undetected by the people living there and explored the natural habitats on the island of Manhattan.  We went for a long nature walk and saw cliffs, rivers, rocky beaches, wetlands, ponds, forests and all sorts of environments.  We heard birds chirping and saw animals scampering about as we walked.  It was so different from the Manhattan we know in 2014!  Suddenly, it began to rain - so we quickly traveled back to 2014.

Today we received research packets about the different habitats we saw - as well as photographs our group took during our nature walk.  In groups, we read about and saw pictures of animals, trees, flowers, and other living things often found in the habitats.  We are gathering lots of information about the habitats - and trying to figure out how the Lenape may have used those habitats in 1514.  On Friday, each group will present about the habitat they've become experts on so that we can all learn more about it.  Next week we will time travel again, but begin working with the Lenape people living on Manhattan.  We can't wait!

Geologist Sort

As we grow as geologists, we are beginning to name what we've discovered.  Last week, we used screens to sort rocks into different sizes.  Today we named those different sizes.  The largest of the three sizes are called pebbles.  The medium sized rocks are called gravel.  And the smallest sizes rocks are called sand.  We saw that pebbles, gravel, and sand could still be sorted by size within those named categories.  We wondered...what are rocks larger than pebbles called?  And are there rocks smaller than sand?  Stay tuned!