Doing math with board books

Mathematicians solve problems. They love to do it, but it is one of the hardest parts of math. To solve a difficult problem, you have to try multiple strategies, talk to your peers, and be willing to persist even when it is hard.

We read two of Mr. MacLellan's son's board books, which happen to be about math! In Rooster's Off to See the World, Eric Carle uses a growing pattern of animals, and in Hippos Go Berserk!, Sandra Boynton uses the same pattern but goes from 1 to 10. In each of these books, we had to figure out how many animals there were in all. It sounds like a simple problem, but it was a great chance to practice keeping track of our work, developing a method to attack a tricky problem, and discussing and sharing strategies.

Welcome to Second Grade!

I hope you all have had a wonderful summer, and you are as excited as I am that school starts next week! My name is Stephen MacLellan, and I am looking forward to having your child in my class. This is my eighth year teaching second grade, and I know we have a busy and fun year ahead of us.

Here are some logistics to think about for next week:

First Day

Our first day of school is next Tuesday, September 5th. School starts at 8:15. For this first day only, we will meet outside at the end of Carlton Terrace. Come find me holding a sign with my name, and students and I will all walk in together.

Supplies

If you are interested in donating markers, colored pencils, glue sticks, glue, tape, etc. to our class, we will happily put it to use! Students do not need to bring in their own sets of any materials. 

Snack and Lunch

Please have your child bring in a snack to eat every day. If you are concerned they will eat their lunch at snack time, you can try putting their snack in a separate, labeled bag. If your child is buying lunch, you can look at the menu for the month at the Food Services website.

School Year Calendar

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0qmR4OyJ3uncWo0SFA5QkVzT1U/view 

Class Blog and Website

We put up information about our classroom in two different places:

Our class website: bit.ly/204rocks

Our class blog: bit.ly/204blog

We also have an Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/lowell204/

Enjoy your last week of summer!

Paper airplanes

As a special end-of-the-year event, our class studied flight and made our own paper airplanes. Here is a video:

We made paper airplanes! from Stephen MacLellan on Vimeo.

Field Day!

We don't have a lot of pictures, but this year's field day was a big success!

Family Readers

We had a number of family readers this year. Here are some of them!

Neighborhood Rocks

Friendly neighborhood rocks from Stephen MacLellan on Vimeo.

The King's Bed

The royal carpenters were presented with the following problem:

Dear Royal Carpenter,

Please build me a bed. I need it to be 7 feet long and 4 feet wide.

Thank you,

The king

We tried our best to solve this problem:

But in the end, all the beds were too small!