Halloween Fun

Mrs. Kennedy's Second Grade Super Stars had lots of fun celebrating Halloween in school today. We had our annual Halloween parade this morning. After parading outside for all the spectators we paraded inside for all the grades. It is always so much fun to see all the different costumes. After lunch we had a fabulous Halloween party. The children decorated pumpkins, made a ghost, played pin the nose on the Jack-o-Lantern, and Halloween Bingo. Thank you very much to our parent volunteers who helped organize such a fun party. Thank you also for your donations for the crafts and prizes.

Math Fun

Mrs. Kennedy's Second Grade Super Stars have been working on some challenging new math concepts. One of the most important second grade common math standards is to be able to add and subtract within 1000, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method. Understand that in adding or subtracting three-digit numbers, one adds or subtracts hundreds and hundreds, tens and tens, ones and ones; and sometimes it is necessary to compose or decompose tens or hundreds.This can be a challenging standard but the students in 2K are up for taking on the challenge and are learning that it's ok to make mistakes and sometimes we have to stick with a problem in order to exercise and grow our brains. 

We started by using base ten pieces to build concrete models of the numbers and learned the concept of regrouping by manipulating the base ten pieces.
Next ,we learned how to write the numbers by lining up the digits in the correct place value  columns and writing the algorithms correctly on our whiteboards.  We practiced this concept by playing a game with the digit cards. The object of the game was to try and get the greatest sum when adding two three digit numbers together. There was some good strategizing taking place.

Then we rotated around four math stations to practice our math skills some more. We are very lucky to have Mrs. Reid work with us in our room once a week during math time. You can see how hard everyone is working and how focused they are on their tasks.

Another fun and engaging math activity that we are participating in during WIN time is a Global Twitter Math Challenge. Each week a different class takes a turn posting math challenges on Twitter for other classes to solve. After we solve the challenge we tweet our answer back to the class. Our turn to post questions will be coming up soon. This is an optional activity but it is so exciting to hear so many students asking to solve the math challenge everyday. You can  find the challenge by searching Twitter for #gmttc2 .

This week we joined our Kindergarten friends in Mrs. Newton's class for a live streaming event presented by Go Noodle. The characters at Go Noodle taught us how to play the mystery geography skype game. We had to guess a mystery location somewhere in the world by asking yes and no questions. Of course there was some singing and dancing involved  so we could get in a motor/brain break. Be sure to ask your child where the mystery skype location was. Hint-It has something to do with a frankfurter (hot dog). We are looking forward to connecting with another class soon to do another mystery skype. This is a great way to learn geography.

October is Anti-Bullying month. We discussed our school bullying rules and then made a paper bracelet stating an important idea about anti-bullying.

Fall Tree

Last week Mrs.Kennedy's Second Grade Super Stars observed our fall tree. This project is the first part of  a  a science unit on the Seasonal Life Cycle of the tree. The students took pictures with the ipads to record their observations. They also used magnifying glasses to observe the parts of the tree closely. As the seasons change we will add an observation of the tree and record our observations for each season. It was a beautiful fall afternoon to be a scientist at Fuller Meadow.

Global Read Aloud

This week Mrs. Kennedy's Second Grade Super Stars started our  Global Read Aloud project . We are reading The BFG by Roald Dahl along with hundreds of thousands of other children from around the world. Today we participated in a Google Hangout with another second grade class from Denver, CO. We took turns asking questions about the first two chapters. The second graders shared some great ideas together about what we have read so far. We have also shared our thinking on padlets to share with other classes. It is so exciting to share our learning globally with classes outside of our school. We can't wait to see what happens to Sophie in the next chapter. 

Our Predictions

Video Clips of our questions that we asked Mrs. Hansen's class during our Google Hangout.

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Sharing our questions with our new friends in Denver, CO.