Week 12 (November 3 - 7)

Week 12 (November 3 – 7)

No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

~Emma Goldman

This quote came to mind as we finished up our read aloud Stargirl and began reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. The comments and concerns that the student revealed for the characters in these two books have been heartwarming to hear. It’s not just the characters, it showed at our We Pink We Can Walk. It is amazing how much compassion and kindness a child can encompass, and it’s that same compassion and kindness that will lead and change our world!

I’m sure that you have heard me say over and over that learning and school should come naturally and should not be forced, but I believe that this really showed this week in our activities and investigations.  Students are naturally curious about the world around them and they want to explore and investigate the concepts that interest them.

Rapping for a Reason

We recently watch a rap video entitled “Verb Rap”, and the student loved it so much that they wanted to create their own raps. We have a total of 5 groups that are each rapping about a different ELA concept. The students have put together dances to go along with these amazing raps and we hope to present them this week for the rest of second grade. We love for you to be there for our presentation!

Here the students are practicing their song and dance... 

Pop that Balloon

In our investigation of matter, we have been discussing the different properties of matter. On Friday we filled balloons with different states of matter; we were curious to see what happened to the matter as it was released from each balloon. I recorded the investigation with my slow motion camera and played it back to the kids. They were amazed at what really happens and all the things we miss with our eyes because it is happening so fast. I encourage you to ask your child about our investigation.

Writing

Writing is so important and so much fun! The kids love time to write. A few weeks ago we began working on our friendly letter to someone in the class and we finally had the time to present them on Friday! The students were so excited to read their letters to their secret friend and also to have a letter read to them that thanked them for being such great friends and that mentioned all of their accomplishments and strengths.

Here are the students presenting and listening to their letters being read to them!

We also wrote letters to one of the characters from Stargirl; it was amazing at the questions they wanted to ask these characters and the personal connections they have made with characters.

Last but not least, we have been working on writing with our reading logs. I’m really encouraging the kids to write complete sentences, but let’s be honest; those reading logs can be quite boring and redundant. So I thought it would be more purposeful and interesting to have the students create their own reading logs and use those to record their daily reading. So be on the lookout for more of these reading log booklets.