Presidents!

I thought I would start off by telling you about our amazing PBL (project based learning) project that we recently finished on Presidents! Below you can see the silly presidents we created during our research portion of the project!! Aren't they adorable! We started the PBL project with anchor videos from Brainpop about Lincoln and George Washington for presidents day! I absolutely love using brain pop videos in my classroom and my students seem to love them too.

We then discussed our PBL guiding questions: What is a President? and How have past presidents influenced our country today?

We then meet in groups to brainstorm and plan out how we could find out the answers to these questions. Students in groups used the brainpop app to research what a president is, and to learn about their duties and responsibilities to our country. They took notes and we discussed their findings as a class. Students then chose presidents to research and used various iPad apps to look up important information about their president. I've included a list of some of the apps we used in class! Some of them we used for research on our president, while others were trivia and games that my students used for enrichment fun once they were done with various aspects of their work throughout the project.

•  The Presidents-Flash Cards of US Presidents
• US Presidents V1
• US President (American Presidents Life History)
• Presidents of United States by Tidels Free
• US Presidents Touch and Learn by Tidels
• US Presidents!
•  US Presidents Fact Free! The Fun History Challenge of US American President Trivia & Pocket Reference Quizzer Lite for Kids!
• Thud! Presidents FREE
• US Presidents: History Challenge Lite
• President Quizzer 

They were given a simple graphic organizer to fill out while they searched, so as to gain a more informed understanding of the life of their president. They edited their graphic organizer and created these presidents below to share their research with their classmates and our school community!

The next step of our presidential PBL project was to look into using their writing skills and technology to publish their learning. Students used the below rubric to write a presidential "autobiography" paragraph as if they were the president that they learned about. The rubric is available here. 

Finally, to culminate our project. Students picked their favorite sentences in their paragraph and we recorded their voices, reading their facts using the app, Funny Movie Maker. They used an image of their president from the internet and made it look as if their president was speaking. They turned out great! I strung them together using iMovie to create the below video. I know that my kids loved working on this project!

Creating Laws

Below I wanted to share some of the amazing Haiku Deck presentations that my students created.
We've been leaning about different laws and why laws are important for citizens. They then worked on a persuasive advertisement campaign to convince the class to vote for their own laws. Students worked in groups to create the below presentation. They are presenting them this week in class, and we will have a class vote for the one most convincing. In a month we will "present" the winning class law to a city council member when we tour city hall. I can't wait to see the council member's reaction. You can clearly tell each and every one of the laws below was created by an eight year old. :)

 

Martin Luther King visits Second Grade

It's almost a 3 day weekend!! Although we just got back from Christmas break, I can't believe how excited I am for the 3 day weekend. To get ready for Martin Luther King Day we embarked on a two week study on peace and Martin Luther King. 

Part of our study included an in-depth look at Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech. We analyzed it like we might a nonfiction article, pulling the main idea out of each section. We then discussed its overall message and purpose. We used garage band to record their voices, reading the speech. We then used iMovie to pair our voice recording with pictures the kids drew of Martin Luther King. Our finished version is below! Hope you enjoy it. 

While we were recording the speech, the students had to be extra extra quiet so as to not be heard in the background. Therefore as a reward for being so awesome, as well as a chance to express themselves, they created these peace collages with watercolors. I pre-cut out a dove from contact paper and my student's stuck attached it to the watercolor paper. They then filled the entire paper with color. We let it dry and then messily glued down tissue paper for added texture. Finally they unpeeled the contact paper so, the white dove would be extra dramatic and bright. They outlined it in sharpie and added flourishes such as crosses, peace signs, stars and hearts and the word, Peace. Each one turned out unique and special. I can't wait to hang them in our classroom windows! 

The dove art idea came from an art blog located here. I slightly changed it, so as to work better with Second Grade, but they still turned out really nicely! 

Finally, we created a simple projects from a template I purchased on teacherspayteachers. We brainstormed as a class different dreams we have for the world today and the kids created these awesome little MLK's. They wrote their own dreams down and we shared them on our Social Studies bulletin board. The rest of them are currently being displayed in our school library. 

Overall, it was an awesome two weeks. Hopefully after this study, they have a somewhat deeper understanding of the Civil Right Movement. I also hope that they have a stronger appreciation for the safe and loving community that their parents and school provide them. Maybe they even have a small memory to help them someday fight for their dreams, and for what is right.

November 2013

Hey everybody. Sorry I've been so terrible this year about updating my blog. I've been so busy transitioning to a new school, new community and whole new set of school expectations that I've let the blog slip by. My goal for 2014 is to at least update once a month. So here are some of the things we worked on in my classroom in November! Hope you enjoy!

In Math we worked on Subtraction! We started by practicing two digit subtraction and made these adorable turkeys to hang on our cabinets!

We also spent  a ton of time mastering 3 digit subtraction. Here you can see the cornucopia that we created as a class for Thanksgiving. Each student was given a fruit or a vegetable with a 3 digit subtraction problem. They had to solve the problem, and color it. We then placed them in our classroom window with a sign that said, "Thank goodness for Math!" The kids came up with the slogan. They thought it was hilarious. 

In the month of November we also spent a ton of time learning about the pilgrims and Native Americans that lived in our country along time ago. We studied pilgrim society, reading books like, "Samuel Eaton: A day in the life of a pilgrim boy" and "Sarah Morton: A day in the life of a pilgrim girl." We compared our own lives today to their lives back then. The kids made these pilgrims and wrote information they learned about the pilgrim boys and girls on the back of their heads. 

For our November Mass, we created an alter cloth using these leaves. Each child in K-2 wrote something they were thankful for on a paper leaf and then watercolored it. We taped them to a white cloth and laid it on the alter for mass. It was beautiful! 

In class we read the book, "Too Many Turkeys" by Linda White. I just love her! We compared it to her book, "Too Many pumpkins" and discussed how interesting her characters are. The kids especially loved the character Buford, the turkey. We decided to make our own class Buford. For homework, each child took home a feather and decorated it anyway they wanted. We then put them together. I think it turned out really fun!   

 Along with our study of pilgrim society, we also studied Native Americans. We learned about the impact white settlers had on them, and learned that not every Native American tribe is the same. Students split into groups and researched different tribes. They created these posters and made videos about each tribe. You can check out the videos below at the first link. You can also check out a more comprehension explanation of this study at the second link. 

Videos

Lesson PLan

This month in Writing we focused on persuasive writing. Common Core standards require that second graders be able to determine the purpose and reasoning behind a text. As a result we decided to create our own stories persuading readers to eat something other than turkey for Thanksgiving. We learned different ways that writers attempt to persuade their writers and then created our own stories. If you're interested in the resources I used for this project. You can find them here. 

Finally, we learned about Saints! We put on a Saints play and researched the parts we played. The kids learned about "see not think" drawing and drew their saints based off of famous paintings. They then had to work on writing informative pieces about their saints. Each child was given a biographical article on their saint and a trackstar site that they could further research their saint on the classroom iPads. If you're interested in recreating the project, my resources are available here. There are 30 different Saints to choose from and the link to the websites for the Saints. I'm currently trying to make the Saints book into an accessible iBook or Shutterfly book. I'll post information about it when I do. More examples of the project lie below. 

http://holyspiritschool2mc.blogspot.com/2013/11/saint-project.html

Dinosaur Project

Throughout the Month of May, rather than embark on another expedition, we spent our Social Studies and Science block of the day learning about Space and then about Dinosaurs. Taking a more PBL approach rather than a full expedition. Both topics are merely introduced in my curriculum, but act as an amazing stimulus for reading and writing. As a result we did a fully independent research project on dinosaurs. Each kid was given a different letter of the alphabet and had to research a dinosaur with that letter. They then had to create a paragraph with a topic sentence, details sentences and a conclusion sentence. They finished their project by drawing their dinosaur and working as a class to compile them into the book below.

Native Americans and the American West

Throughout the month of February my students began working on their Famous Americans Expedition. Now that we've learned all about how humans influence the environment around us, its time to look at how humans influence other humans. We became historians, studying the creation of our country, beginning with Native Americans.

Because young children often gain their knowledge of Native Americans through very stereotypical portrayals found in television, toys, Halloween costumes, and Thanksgiving legends,  I designed my instruction to put these misconceptions to rest through integration of literacy sequencing standards, and an introduction to elementary research. 

I began by reading two Native American stories aloud. Students were asked to sequence these two stories through the use of story time statues and a storyboard graphic organizer. We then learned about how sequencing is important not just in understanding history but also in fully understanding literature.

Following these stories, we reflected in our journals on a visual image and I asked them to determine whether or not all Native Americans are the same. Connecting their prior knowledge to the varying depictions of Native Americans from the two stories and the image, we learned that Native Americans are a broad group of people made up by many different nations. 

Students then spent time researching different Native American nations. They created group posters and presented their understanding to the class. Finally we ended by discussing how white settlement affected all Native Americans. 

Below is an image of the five posters my students created this year. I'm always extremely impressed at how engaged my students are during this study. They go above and beyond their grade level to delve deep into the material and truly learn. 

If you're interested in seeing exactly how I taught this lesson, check out the entire plan, complete with materials, on the Western History Association's website here. I submitted this lesson through one of their contests last year and was awarded the Charles Redd Center Teaching Western History Award for excellent lesson planning in social studies.

Humans and Nature

Hey everyone! January is speeding by! I wanted to share with you my students final product in our Expedition on Humans and Nature. Below is the book my students created about various Endangered, Threatened or Species of Concern that exist in Colorado today. Everything in the book was either written or drawn by my students. The only thing I contributed was the instruction as a teacher and my shutterfly formating abilities. I'm extremely proud of all my students hard work. We hope you enjoy it!

Click here to view this photo book larger

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