Author Visit

One of our favorite days at Fuller Meadow is when we have our author visit during Read Across America. This year we were very fortunate to have author and illustrator, David Biedrzycki come to visit. This very entertaining author kept the children engaged for over an hour, talking and sharing about the writing process. He showed the students how to draw some of his beetle characters using the website sumopaint.com.He now does all of  his illustrating  using technology and considers himself  a green author and illustrator since he no longer has any paper waste. David shared one of his new stories, Bear Alert, with the children and talked about where he got his ideas for this story as well as showing the students how much revising and editing he has to do before his stories can be published. Be sure to watch the video at the end of this post of some of the second students asking questions to the author.

 David Biedrzycki is the illustrator for Hood Vanilla Milk and Life Savers Popsicles.

 We even got a special classroom visit!

Video of second graders asking questions

Fun with Fundations

Today Mrs. Kennedy's Second Grade Super Stars did a Making It Fun Fundations activity. In this unit the students have been learning about suffixes and base words. Working in small groups, the second graders made new words by adding the suffix -y, -ty, or -ly to a base word. Next the children used their new words in a sentence.

 

 

Reading: Foundational Skills
Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
Decode words with common prefixes and suffixes.

Project Groundhog Update

Mrs. Kennedy's Second Grade Super Stars completed Project Groundhog last week. At the end of the 6 weeks we determined that Punxsutawny Phil's prediction of an early spring was more accurate than our very own groundhogs at Fuller Meadow. Groundhog Frank predicted 6 more weeks of winter which according to all our data collection was not a true prediction. Although given the current weather forecast it is debatable! Each week we recorded the daily temperature in Celsius and the sky conditions. At the end of each week we calculated the average temperature for the week and compared our weather data to other schools throughout the country. By the end of the 6 weeks the students were getting very accurate at predicting Celsius temperatures. Finding the average temperature each week was a great way to practice adding 5 numbers and dividing the total by 5. We also practice rounding skills when rounding the temperature each day to the nearest whole number. Each week there was a special project to complete and share with our Project Groundhog teammates. There was lots of great project based learning that took place during this project.

Essential Question :  Is the groundhog predicting an early spring or extended winter a myth or truth?

Project Groundhog video sharing groundhog research

Students used Kiddle.co on the ipads to do their groundhog research.

The Power of thee Penny Author Skype

Click on the picture below to check out Mrs. Baker's blog post about our Author Skype visit.

Created with Padlet

The Places You'll Go

Last Friday our Read Across America celebration was The Places You'll Go. The students at Fuller Meadow wore clothes that represented their favorite places to go or a place they would like to go.
Check out the padlet and videos (turn your volume all the way up for the collage videos) below and feel free to add your favorite place to go.

Created with Padle

 

Dental Health

At the end of February we were very lucky to have a very special guest visit the second graders at Fuller Meadow. Mrs. Fullerton came to school to teach the second graders about keeping their teeth healthy. Mrs. Fullerton involved her dental health students at Essex Tech by sharing a video that they made about dental health. Her students also made goodie bags for the students consisting of a new toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, and a healthy dental tip. Thank you to Mrs. Fullerton for this wonderful program.

Read Across America

This week Mrs.Kennedy's Second Grade Super Stars celebrated Read Across America. We kicked off this event on March 2nd by recognizing Dr. Seuss' birthday. We started the day by reading Dr. Seuss stories with Mrs. Begin's class and Mrs. Libby's class. It was a fun way to read with some different students at Fuller Meadow.  Later in the day we participated in a live streaming author presentation by  Peter Reynolds. He read and discussed his latest book Going Places. The students enjoyed sharing their thinking about the important messages such as collaboration and determination that are portrayed through this story. We ended the day with a Google Hangout with three other classes and we virtually read across America. The classes were from Arkansas, Texas, and California. Each class shared a Dr. Seuss story. The second graders in 2K each shared a page from a Dr. Seuss story and the other classes had to guess the story. On Friday we all wore Silly Socks and designed silly socks to go along with the story Fox in Socks.

Sharing our Dr. Seuss stories

Virtual Author visit by Peter Reynolds

Essential Questions asked during the broadcast and answered by the students were:

Where do writers and artists get their ideas?

What inspires people to write and make art?

How does collaboration expand the creative process?

How is creativity part of everyday life?

Google Hangout

Speaking and Listening Standards
1. Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 2 topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
3. Ask and answer questions about what a speaker says in order to clarify comprehension, gather additional information, or deepen understanding of a topic or issue.

Silly Socks