William Steig

We have read a whole bunch of books lately by a very fun author and illustrator, William Steig.

We had been reading fairy tales, including many versions of Cinderella, Rumplestilskin, and Little Red Riding Hood, when we read our first William Steig book, Shrek. We realized that many of his stories have similar themes as fairy tales.

One of our favorite things about William Steig is that he always chose amazing words. Shrek was not just ugly, he was repulsive. We like to ask each other, "What word would William Steig use?"

At the end of our author study unit, we made a video of what is similar about many of William Steig's books.


William Steig books from Stephen MacLellan on Vimeo.

Do you have a favorite William Steig book?

Butterflies!

We have been studying caterpillars and butterflies for the past few weeks. A butterfly is an insect. Like all insects, they have hard exoskeletons, 6 legs, and 3 main body segments.

Butterflies have a very specialized mouth. It is called a proboscis. Don't know how to say that word? Break it up into parts: pro   bos   cis   then blend it together. Try saying it three times fast!

Image source: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos, from Wikimedia Commons, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Australian_painted_lady_feeding_closeup.jpg

A proboscis is like a long, flexible tongue. The butterfly can curl it up close to its body when it isn't using it. But when a butterfly lands on a flower, it extends the long, thin proboscis and sucks up nectar from inside a flower. Bees drink up nectar the same way! Do you think butterflies are pollinators just like bees are?

We raised Painted Lady caterpillars. When we first got them, they were tiny larvae (caterpillars) only 1 centimeter long. They ate and ate, munching on their crushed-up leaf food. When they grew, they shed their skin, and emerged with a new, bigger skin. Eventually, they stuck to the roof of their containers, curled into a J shape, and made a chrysalis to protect them while they metamorphasized. In their chrysalis, they were the third phase in their life cycle. They were pupas.

Finally, they emerged from the chrysalis, dried their wings, and flew around. They are now adults. If there are males and females, they will mate and the females will lay new eggs. New tiny caterpillars will come out of these eggs, and the cycle will continue!

Nonfiction texts

We are thinking a lot about nonfiction texts these days. Nonfiction books are true information books. What kind of call number would a nonfiction book have?

Today, we made a chart showing different features that many nonfiction books use to help teach you their information. We found these in books in our classroom. Look around your house. Can you find one of these features in a book, a magazine, or a newspaper? Can you find them in any other kind of text?

Science and Drawing

This past week, we have been doing a lot of drawing in our science lab. We practiced our scientific illustration skills by looking closely at plants, and then moved on to some mystery fossils.

A recent article in the Boston Globe highlighted the importance that drawing plays in professional scientific communities. Drawing is a chance to look closely, notice fine details, and work beyond the general symbol of a thing that exists in our heads to a more nuanced reflection of what is actually there. Drawing is also a way to communicate our ideas with our audience, and to show what we are thinking and imagining. When we draw, we refine our own understanding in order to make our idea clear to someone else. Gradually, our pictures of animals lose their smiley faces. In their place, we draw the compound eye and segmented body of a cricket. This closer attention changes our understanding of the world.

Happy Read Across America Day!

We love to read!

Happy Read Across America Day! from Stephen MacLellan on Vimeo.

Please note, this video requires our password to view.

Reading with our buddies

Saturday, March 2nd is National Read Across America day, in honor of the esteemed Dr. Seuss.

At the Lowell School, we are keeping track of our reading during the month of March. If our whole school reads for enough minutes, our principal Ms. Kaplan will get wrapped up in a giant snake!

Today, we read with our buddies. We had a lot of fun!

Publishing Day!

We finished up writing, revising, editing, illustrating, printing, and publishing our first books of second grade! To celebrate this giant task, we had a breakfast with our families, where we shared our hard work and some tasty treats.

We also had a special visitor come and talk with our class about the publishing process. Heather McGee is a designer at Candlewick Press. She works with authors, editors, illustrators, printers, and many other people to get books ready. We had many, many questions for her, but she knew all of the answers. Being a book designer sounds like a lot of work, but she really loves her job.

She showed us a book she designed, The Black Rabbit. She had to make many choices for this book: from details about what color to make the title to what kinds of illustrations would be best. Even though people say, "You can't judge a book by its cover," the designer spends a lot of time making the cover exciting for readers, so they will choose it when they see it at the library or book store.

We learned that the whole process of publishing a book takes more than a year!

This is a large color proof sent from the printer. It is called a running sheet. The designer and illustrator check it to make sure that everything is printing as it should. Sometimes, they need to change the colors to make certain things stand out more. The colored bars on the side show the four ink colors they use in the gigantic printing press: cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow, and black. These four colors get printed in layers to make up every other color!

Heather also shared a few other books that her company has made, and she donated a few to our classroom for us to read and enjoy. Thank you!