Faith Ringgold

In closing circle today we looked at two pieces of art from Faith Ringgold:

Tar Beach #2 

Working Women 

Here is the quick video we saw about her inspiration:

Here is a longer video about her process for making story quilts:

Ant cooperation video

Here is the ant cooperation video we watched:

Landforms!

Here is our slideshow from today:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1buw3twtLoBBEKGdTQcxPRSz1uwV11WBSwIGakUR-iS4/edit?usp=sharing

Have fun drawing your island maps!

math questions!

Thanks for all of your work during math class today!

If you want to work on some math problems that kids in our class wrote, here is a document with them: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rwPU2aB6ibomX21gPlkV7tolgX1zIZsKnUUjwLtvloA/edit?usp=sharing

There are some tricky ones and some simpler ones (one even goes into the thousands, but you can totally solve it yourself!).

Try writing your work and your answers on a piece of paper or in your notebook.

Good luck!

Monday, April 6th

Good morning friends,

Mrs. Curtin and Max have a question for you today from their walk:

Here is your questionnaire for today:

Remember to work on these assignments this week.

We will have a meeting at 10:00 am Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday every week. See you tomorrow!

Sincerely,

Your teachers

Wednesday, April 1st

Good morning friends!

Let's start off with the questions from last Friday and from yesterday. I had asked: "Would you rather live in a cabin on a mountain or on an island?"

Here is what you said:
Island Because they are cool.
Island Because I like beaches.
Island I really like to swim.
Island Because the mountain does not have any water.
Island Because I can go swimming and fishing.
Island I would like to be able to go swimming in the water.
Island Because it’s warm!
Island Because I can go swimming every single second of the day.
Island I like the water.
Mountain Because they are cool.
Mountain So I could go skiing all year long.

Here are the kinds of bread you have made:
Honey wheat, Irish soda bread, original bread and pie, banana bread, zucchini bread, and whole wheat.

When I asked about notebooks, most people wanted one for both drawing and writing:

both drawing and writing	because I like drawing and writing
both drawing and writing	So I could draw about my writing.
writing	Because I do not like drawing as much!
both drawing and writing	Because when I don’t want to do not do writing l can do drawing
both drawing and writing	Because I like making comics
both drawing and writing	Because you can make a picture about your story.
drawing	Because I love drawing
drawing	I would rather draw then write.
drawing	I don’t like writing & drawing you can be creative
both drawing and writing	Because I like both
drawing	I do not like writing!

Here is our question for today:

Rhys has a math question for you to solve:

The Ninth Nugget
Josh found 5 nuggets. Ruth Rose found 3 nuggets. Dink found 2 nuggets. Each other person found 2. All together, there are 50 nuggets. How many other people are there?

If you figure it out, send me your answer and I will share it with Rhys to check!

Our survey today. It is a tricky one because you have to write your own story problem!

Tuesday, March 31st

Good morning friends!

We have a question about notebooks today:



There are two new read alouds on our website: https://sites.google.com/site/lowellroom204/at-home-resources/read-alouds

Here is today's survey!


Have a great day!

Your teachers

Friday, March 27th

Good morning friends!

Here is our question of the day, along with some jokes.


If you want to learn more about money, visit these two links:
- https://www.moneyfactory.gov/uscurrency.html
- https://www.uscurrency.gov/educational-materials/classrooms/currency-academy

We also have a new read aloud from a Mo Willems book:


Want to see Mo Willems talk about making Nanette's Baguette? Look for "Episode 4" in his lunchtime doodles video series: https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/mo-willems/

And a sing along to "Down By the Bay," with new lyrics from you!


Here is our survey for today:


Have a great weekend!

Your teachers

Virtual Morning Meetings!

We are very excited for our virtual morning meetings! We miss you, and we want to see how you are doing. As we begin our virtual morning meetings, remember how we follow meeting circle norms at school. These are good to keep in mind when we have virtual meetings, too, but some things are slightly different in this new environment.

Our meeting norms:

- Sit or kneel
You don't need to be criss-cross for our meetings, but you do need to be sitting. You could be in a chair, a couch, or on the floor, but you should still be sitting.

- Keep your body calm and to yourself
Keeping your body calm helps you and everyone else stay focused. Our meeting isn't very long, so keep toys, books, and other distractions out of your hands. Your cat or your little sister might wander by, but try to ignore them.

- Pay attention to the person who is talking 
Just like at school.

- Raise your hand for questions and comments
For our first meeting, we are going to try to do this and see how it goes. A teacher will see you raising your hand, and we will call on you for your turn. It is very hard for the computer program to know who the main person is if more than one person is talking at a time. If raising hands doesn't work, just use our normal no-hands procedures: let other people finish talking before you do.

To these regular meeting norms, we are going to add these:

- Wear your normal school clothes
It isn't pajama day today.

- This is a meeting for our class
You probably have some family members around to help with tech support on your end, but this meeting is just for our class, so you will be the only participant from your family.

- Choose a quiet spot
There shouldn't be noises or talking in your background.

- Remember, you're on camera!
Just like when. you were in our play, everyone can see and hear what you are doing and saying.

- Keep your camera still
Pick a spot to sit in and then stay in that spot. If you are using a phone or ipad to attend our meeting, try propping it up on some books so you don't have to hold it. It is distracting if you're moving your camera around while we are trying to say hi.


See you online!

Wednesday, March 25th

Good morning friends!

Our question of the day is related to Minnie and Moo. Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets?



We have a musical craft activity for you to complete, if you want. We will be doing a percussion play-along on Friday, so get making!



I'm doing my READ-O card to keep my at-home reading interesting. Are you?



Your questionnaire for today:



Here are the responses from our earlier questions:

Would you rather have your superhero hideout in a treehouse or in a cave?

Would you rather be able to fly or read other people's minds?

These are both pie charts. We haven't talked about them, but I bet you can figure out how to read them!

Remember that tomorrow, Thursday the 26th, at 10:00 AM we have our first virtual morning meeting. We will be sending a reminder email this afternoon, but make sure it is on your family's calendar! You will probably want an adult on hand to help you get set up with the video call. Ask them nicely.

We hope you have a great day!

Mr. MacLellan, Mrs. Curtin, and Ms. Miller

Tuesday, March 24th

Good morning friends!

We have another superhero question today: Would you rather be able to fly or able to read other people's minds?

I hope you enjoyed the snow yesterday afternoon! Did any of you build a snow fort? (Ha ha, very funny Mr. MacLellan...)


Thanks for your responses yesterday! If you didn't answer yesterday's questions, there is still time!

Here is our song for you at-home morning meeting today:

Have a great day!

Mr. MacLellan, Mrs. Curtin, and Ms. Miller

Monday, March 23rd

Hello friends!

It is Monday, March 23rd, and we have a cold and cloudy kind of day. It might snow today, which would be a rude awakening for the plants that are starting to wake up in my garden. Today's question is about superhero hideouts. I look forward to hearing from you!
You can fill out this questionnaire to answer the question and let me know how you are doing!


Talk to you soon!

Friday, March 20th

Good morning friends!

Here's our question for today, with a cameo from Calum and Ingrid:

Let me know what you think!

A few other logistical things:

1. We will be scheduling a virtual morning meeting for next week as a chance to check in with each other and say "Hi!" I will record it and make a copy available in case you aren't able to join at a set time.

2. Here is a message from Señora Reed:

For continued learning in Spanish, please refer to the extending learning website and our school FLES website as it is being updated weekly with songs, games, videos, read alouds, etc. Please feel free to print the work packets as well. We recommend practicing for 15 minutes daily.

link to FLES website: https://sites.google.com/view/fles-spanish-at-lowell/home
email: joan.reed@watertown.k12.ma.us

3. Check out the district website for some more resources to use at home, if you would like to.

You can leave a comment in the field below, email me your responses (and pictures of what you're up to!), or fill out this survey:

Click here to open it in another tab.

Mr MacLellan

Wednesday, March 18th

Good morning friends!

I went out for a walk in the woods this morning, with Calum and Ingrid in tow, looking for birds. We saw a bunch, but we heard many more. Sometimes, birds are small and hard to see, and it is easier to listen for their calls and songs. Is there anyone in your family who is good at identifying birds? 

I made a video for you this morning with a question of the day:

I hope you have a chance to go for a walk in the sunshine or play in your backyard sometime today. It was so nice to get out after being stuck inside yesterday during the rain (and snow). Let me know your answers to our question, and send me pictures of any projects you are working on right now.

You can also listen to some books I read aloud, and sing along with some of our songs, too.

Sincerely,

Your teachers :)

Weekly Update: 9/30 - 10/4

Reader's Workshop
- Readers have strategies for figuring out brand-new words. You can use strategies to figure out what a new vocabulary word means. We read the word "fixing" in Vera Williams' book Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe, and could tell from the context (fixing breakfast) that fixing meant making here, not repairing.
- Readers check themselves and their reading, making sure they are saying the right words and it all makes sense. We used shared reading (looking at one text and reading together as a group, out loud) to work on fluency and to discuss strategies that readers use as they go. We read the poem "Lunch" (which many students have memorized at this point!) and a chapter in one of the Mercy Watson books for this work. When we got to unknown words, tricky ones that might be hard for second graders, we thought: What makes sense? What sounds right? and What looks right?

Writer's Workshop
We are still writing personal narratives, true stories from our lives. We learned more good strategies for making our writing more interesting and descriptive.
- We can describe a place in our stories. We played a game where other students had to guess where we were after just reading a list of descriptive words.
- We used techniques to build drama in our stories (the drama of the turning of the page).
- We stole borrowed techniques from books we had read, because good authors are always learning new ways from what they read. The one we loved the most was the . . . , which then showed up in almost everyone's story to build drama and keep readers wondering what would happen.
- We reviewed punctuation and capitalization so that our sentences are easy to read and understand.
- We reviewed all of the many, many writing strategies we learned about this year.

Math
We kept learning about measurement with metric units this week. We measured with centimeter rulers (both the ones we made last week and ones from our classroom), used a measuring tape to find how big a meter is, and thought about how to measure really big objects. We used mental benchmarks to help us estimate some lengths in centimeters and meters. For instance, we know the door is about 2 meters tall, and that can help us figure out how many meters other large objects are, too. We compared metric lengths and solved addition and subtraction problems by using a measuring tape and ruler.

We had the most fun measuring in non-standard units, though. Mr. MacLellan tricked the class by giving different groups different sizes of paper clips and then measuring the same objects. When different groups had different answers, we wondered what had gone wrong. Through some careful detective work, students figured out that some had a large paper clip and others had a small one. You always have to watch those sneaky teachers.

Science
We are starting to think about observable physical properties, things like color, hardness, absorbency, flexibility, and texture. We tested some materials for these properties and shared our results with the group.

We also spent some time in our school garden. We found and drew white flowers, and thought about what plant structures we have seen and what they are for.

Social Studies
We are studying maps! We looked at a number of very different maps, and described what we noticed in them. You can look at some maps at home, too!

Weekly Update: 9/23 - 9/27

Reader's Workshop
We continued our reading work by practicing some strategies for solving unknown words. We said, "Second grade readers roll up their sleeves to figure out tricky words, drawing on everything they know." We talked about using more than one strategy at a time, looking, for instance, at how to predict what word probably goes in a spot, then checking by re-reading the first part of the word. We asked ourselves if the words we read made sense, and practiced going back to fix ones that didn't. We looked at beginnings and endings that can be read in a snap, and vowel teams in the middle of words. We also went over book shopping and how to use our classroom library to choose a just-right book.

Writer's Workshop
We are doing a lot of writing! Second graders are already making a lot of progress from their work just a few weeks ago. This week, we are talking about:
- How do authors stretch out their stories to keep them interesting? What are all the details you can add?
- Good authors use star words to keep their writing interesting to their readers.
- We can tell our readers how the characters feel in our stories. Feelings are great places to use star words to be very specific. We made a giant list of feeling words as a class.
- Authors use many techniques to add emphasis to a word or a phrase, things like writing in bold, caps, or underlining.

Math
We finished up our first math unit of the year, thinking about ways of breaking up numbers when adding and subtracting. For a problem like 26 - 7, we used number bonds to break the bigger number into 10 and some more. Our new problem would be 10 - 7, which is easy to solve! Then, we can add the 3 back to the remaining 16. Strategies like these are very useful for being flexible in our thinking when we get to more challenging math work this year, and in being able to solve problems in our heads.

We also started our next math unit, measuring in metric units, including adding and subtracting lengths. We built on what students had learned in first grade.We used centimeter cubes to measure objects, starting at the beginning and keeping all of the units touching. We figured out what to do the thing is not exactly a specific number of cubes (choose the number it is closest to, and show that it is approximate by writing ~). We then used just one cube to measure objects, marking the lengths as we measured on paper. We ended the week by creating our own centimeter rulers with a cube, a task that required a lot of patience, careful work, and perseverance when things got challenging.

Science
We worked more on our scientific drawing skills this week, making detailed drawings of shells. We also used magnets to explore an observable physical property in the materials in our classroom!

Social Studies
We tried to consolidate our rule ideas from last week, combining those that were similar and trying to get close to identifying just 4 or 5 big rules for second grade. This was tricky, but we started to see how many of our ideas shared common features and could be grouped together into other categories. We ended the week with a final 5 rules:
- show respect
- do our best work
- take care of materials and spaces
- be kind
- have fun, even when it is hard
These rules will guide our classroom lives this year, and we will continue to check how we are living up to them.

Spanish
We had two days of Español with Señora Reed. We are continuing to work on describing the things in a classroom.
- Cómo está el tiempo?
- En mi mochila, yo tengo...
- Dibujar y escribir utiles

News and Other Information
For morning meeting questions this week:
- What is your favorite fall activity?
- Do you have a favorite word?
- Did you ever stay over at your grandparent's house?
- Do you ever help with making dinner?

The first week of school

Welcome to Second Grade! We have a fun and exciting year ahead of us, filled with growth, learning, and friendships.

The first weeks of school focus on getting to know each other, learning classroom routines, and developing our group dynamics. Grounding this work is our school's implementation of the Responsive Classroom approach.

Reader's Workshop
We read a lot of books this week! We loved School's First Day of School, All Are Welcome!, Chrysanthemum, and Clark the Shark. We also started our readers workshop, and began thinking of ourselves as big-time readers. Over the next month, we will build our independent reading stamina, going from less than 10 minutes now to over 45 minutes in the beginning of October. Second graders read a lot, and building this stamina is essential for all of the reading growth we will see this year.

We had a couple of reading lessons this week, learning about choosing just-right books with the 5 finger rule, how to have a discussion with a partner, what independent reading should look like, and how to have a class discussion about a book.

Writer's Workshop
We set our expectations for writing in second grade, because second graders write a lot. We only have thirty minutes of writer's workshop a day, so we have to make every minute count! Mr. MacLellan showed us the magic wands we will be using this year (that can make marks on paper, and then make them disappear!) This week, we were writing about things that happened over summer vacation.

Math
We started the year with a "Week of Inspirational Math," an idea from Jo Boaler's Youcubed initiative. Students worked together to solve challenging and expansive problems, ones with no set answers, that introduced us to the mindsets we need to have in math this year. We identified ways to sort emojis and shapes, played a game to find combinations of tens and ones, used Cuisinaire rods to explore equivalency, and found combinations of feet from different animals. We also watched a bunch of mindset videos about our incredible brains!

Social Studies
We are building our classroom community this week, learning about each other, our roles in the class, and our expectations for lunch and recess.

News and Other Information
Back to school night is Thursday, September 19th!

KIBO Robots!

We studied robots and programming. We started by creating a programming language to guide a student "robot" though a maze.

We studied electronics with Little Bits.

And, we used two robot sets called KIBO. These robots use wooden blocks you connect to create a program for the robot to follow.

Our KIBO kits were purchased by the PTO through a generous grant from the Watertown Community Foundation. Thank you!

Some end-of-year videos

We read a number of books by Oliver Jeffers. One of his books, The Great Paper Caper, has a bear who makes paper airplanes. To wrap up our author study, we all made paper airplanes!

Field day was a lot of fun!

Notes from our communications managers