Guide to Research: How to take notes

Taking notes can help you remember the information you learn. Taking notes also helps you organize information. Taking notes is a good research skill!

It can be hard to take notes, though. Sometimes it is hard to decide what the most important information is. Sometimes it is hard to know how to take notes without just copying what the author said. Learning how to take notes takes time. That's why you are practicing it in second grade.

The first thing we learned about taking notes is that notes can be quick. You do not need to write full sentences in your notes. You might not need to use capitals at the beginning (unless you are writing a name) or punctuation at the end. 

The second thing we learned about taking notes is that notes need to be written in your own words, not the words the author wrote. When you write sentence notes, you take the information you read and change it so that it is your own writing. If you copy what an author said, you put quotation marks " " around the words to show that someone else said it.

We also learned two forms for taking notes - with bullets and with a "mind map."

Bullet form example:

Mind map examples:

Biography Research Project

During the second half of the year in second grade, we begin to have research projects as a part of our homework. Our first research project is a biography research project. We are going to be studying meaningful Americans who have made a difference in the world. We met with Ms. Steim, our school librarian, who helped us think about biographies, research, and sources. We each chose a biography from the school library.

We will be doing a lot of research! We need to read the book from Ms. Steim, and find a second source of information about our meaningful American. 

For more information about this project, please read the letter to families we have posted on the Lowell Second Grade website.

If you have lost the note form, or any of the other documents we give out during this project, look on the Second Grade website.

We will have a "Guide to Doing Research" posted on our class webpage very soon!

The Halfway Bandit

Today is th 90th day of school, which means that we are halfway through the school year.

None of us, however, could have predicted the actions of The Halfway Bandit, who struck our classroom in the wee hours of the morning, before anyone was at school. How he evaded our school's nighttime alarm remains a mystery.

Upon our arrival at school, we began to notice that a number of things were missing from our classroom. Half of the morning message was gone, erased clean off the whiteboard. Half of the schedule was missing, half the days on our calendar, half of the clock, half of WYDWYD, half of our book boxes, half of the ropes we use to indicate who is in the bathroom, half of the "because" cards on our board, and half of the B b D d were all gone. He even changed the short date to "1/2/7" instead of "2/4/14"! 

We wouldn't have known what had happened if Yeti and Sasquatch hadn't told us.

Luckily, Mr. MacLellan had a book all about the bandit, and we were able to get back some of our things throughout the day. We had to make half badges, a piece of paper half one color and half another. We had to fix the morning message. We had to sing the half day song, and even dance the halfway dance.

Legend has it that The Halfway Bandit was someone who loved to share, but other people didn't share with him, and he has haunted the halfway day at schools ever since. We hope things are returns to normal tomorrow!

Studying Matter

Our science research has shifted from a study of islands, rocks, and the Earth to a study of the structure and properties of matter. Matter is the "stuff" that everything is made of, and second graders spend a lot of time testing out different materials to determine their properties. In the future, we will be applying our understanding of various properties to design a couple of inventions. For now, however, we will be working on designing experiments to test a few different materials.

Our initial experiment compared water and a wooden block. These two different materials underwent the same tests. Scientists always need to make sure they are doing fair tests - comparing results of the same experiment with only one variable changed. 

We put a block and water through a funnel. We put each into a cup. We put a foam block on top of each one. Finally, we put our fingers on top of each material. Mr. MacLellan tested them with two other experiments, as well. He poured each material onto his hand. He hit each material with a hammer. We made sure we were always doing a fair test by making sure that the test happened exactly the same way with each new material.

Materials we want to test in the future include:

Banana

Metal

Obsidian

The earth

Air

Curvy metal

Smoke

Ice

Water

Ink

A pin

Wood

A basketball

A racket

Mac and cheese

Hair

Pizza

Rubber

A can

Slime

A hard covered book

A bean bag

A light bulb

A rock

Cardboard

A crayon

Plastic

We might now test all of those, and we might test others that aren't on this list!

We also came up with a list of ways to test materials:

Hammer

Try to break with our hands

Put ice on it

Put into a tank of water

Try to cut it

Put mentos on it

We will definitely conduct some of these tests, conduct some that aren't on this list, and not conduct some from here. We are very excited for this unit!

Sewing Project

The students of room 204 have been working on a sewing project. We started by working with a material called "plastic canvas", where we practiced the whip stitch and the running stitch. Then, we worked on making bean bags with felt and yarn. Our last project is to make our own stuffed animals! We are very excited.

The Little Old Trixie Who Was Not Afraid of Anything: The Movie

We performed our play on December 5th. After we performed the play, we filmed some scenes to make a movie of the play. Our movie is finally done! Watch it here:



The Little Old Trixie Who Was Not Afraid of Anything from Stephen MacLellan on Vimeo.

To see the script we wrote, visit our Mo Willems website.

The Play!

We have our play tomorrow, Thursday December 5th, at 8:30am. Families are invited to attend, but we will also be making a video of the play for those who aren't able to be there.

We are very excited!

--
Stephen MacLellan
Lowell Elementary School
Watertown, MA
stephen.maclellan@watertown.k12.ma.us