The second grade went on a field trip to Farmington Bay to learn about adaptations, wetlands, and shorebirds. It was a rainy day so we didn't get to go on the walk to see the birds, but we did drive around on the bus to see as many birds as we could. And we saw quite a few!

We saw the rookery for the great blue herons, although we didn't get great views of the herons themselves. We saw red-winged blackbirds, American coots, cinnamon teal, mallards, gadwals, snowy egrets, avocets, Canadian geese and a few others. Farmington Bay has about 8,000 acres and 5 million birds. There are 47 types of ducks that come there. In February there are many bald eagles. I liked seeing the snowy egrets the best, although I'm not sure why. The avocets are also quite pretty.

Here is the great blue heron, roosting on its eggs.

No one was sure what he was. He was with a group of Canadian geese, but his head was bigger and his coloring was different. Maybe he was a Canadian goose with some type of growth on his neck? Maybe he was some other type of goose? Not sure.

The avocets are colorful. Many of my students picked these as favorites.

My favorite...the snowy egret. The kids were especially interested in the American coot because it doesn't have webbed feet and has to run on the water to take off. After seeing the birds, we went into one of the classrooms to learn more about some of the birds and to talk about adaptations. The kids learned how different types of beaks help birds to catch different animals and even tried it out, using different objects as beaks and trying to "get lunch"... plastic plants, fish, worms, bugs, and other yummy foods.

In the second classroom, the students got to see and learn a bit more about some of the predators at Farmington Bay...coyotes, raccoons, red foxes, skunks, and muskrats. They saw some of their skulls and were able to see and touch their pelts. The teacher showed them owl pellets and explained what they are (which grossed many students out). We also learned a cute little ditty about scat. Then the students used ink pads and molds of the animals' feet to make footprints/tracks on their papers.

After returning to class, I had the students write about what they had seen and learned. They also drew pictures of the birds and Farmington Bay.

Here are what some of the students had to say (in their own words, with occasional small corrections by me of spelling or punctuation..but not word choice/grammar): AT: "Today we went on a field trip to Farmington Bay! We saw lots of birds! My favorite was the snowy egret! They have long legs. They eat fish. It still flies even if it has long legs. The snowy egret predators are coyotes, red foxes, raccoons, and skunks!" ER: "Today we went on a field trip to Farmington Bay.I learned that the great blue heron builds a giant nest. I saw a snowy eegret, American coot, great blue heron and Canada goose. My favorite bird was the killdeer because it would pretend to have a broken wing to save its eggs." KI: "Today we went on a field trip to Farmington Bay. A killdeer can do a trick. First he pretends he has a broken arm when a predator comes close. He jumps then flies goes back on his nest. My favorite bird is a bald eagle." IC: "Today we went on a field trip to Farmington Bay. My favorite bird is the snowy egret. I liked the trip because I like birds and I never seen so much birds." JA: "Today we went on a field trip to Farmington Bay. I learned that killdeer pretends it has a broken leg and when an animal comes and tries to eat a killdeer's babies, it pretends it has a broken leg and walks over to another place. The animals goes over there and the killdeer flies and goes back to its babies." IS: "Today we went on a field trip to Farmington Bay. We learned that a pelican uses its beak to catch fish but its mouth is full of water so it tips its mouth and water goes out of the mouth. And the pelican has tasty fish to eat. I learned that the pelican goes in groups and just the right time they all dive at once."

Daily Graphing

I have really slacked on this blog. Sorry!

One part of my morning routine is to have students vote on a daily question as they walk in the door. Then when we are doing calendar, we turn this vote into a graph. It allows us to practice a variety of graphs and tables all year long as well as answering questions about the graphs and the data. It could even be used as a springboard for persuasive writing.

Students use clothesline pins to vote. (Although I do occasionally switch things up a bit and try some other ways to vote.) There are usually 2-4 choices. Then I use their votes to create a graph...bar graphs, line plots, charts, or pictographs as these are the types of graphs we study in second grade. During calendar, I show the students the graph and ask them questions. Do more students like turkey or ham? How many fewer students ate cereal than ate eggs for breakfast? How many students like turkey and ham altogether? and so on.

The students enjoy it. We enjoy seeing what is popular in our classroom, and it is a great way to practice graphing on a daily basis.

Then at the end of the month, I bind that month's graphs together into a class book that students can read over and over again for the rest of the year.

Writing Ideas

I recently read a great book entitled Games for Writing by Peggy Kaye. She has some great ideas to make writing fun and engaging for children. I've tried a few in my classroom and hope to try out a few more.

Here are a few that I liked:
1. Family Journal: Once a week or once a day or once a month, have the whole family sit down and write a journal entry to add to a family journal. Little kids can draw a picture and parents can scribe what they wrote. Put the date at the top and be sure to go back and reread the entries from time to time. One family I know does this yearly as an extended family at Christmas time...grandpa and grandma, aunts, uncles, cousins all write about the highlights of that year and add it to an annual book.

2. Write comic books.

3. Create your own board game.

4. Write a menu for a monster cafe. (Or a cafe for bugs or dinosaurs or whatever your child is interested in.)

5. Write letters and mail them.

6. Angry Alphabet book...this is an ABC book (so that encourages lots of writing) but all the characters in the book are angry, grumpy and unpleasant. Like A is for Angry, Annoying Adam the Ape. B is for boisterous, box-shaped bugs.

7. Silly Sentences (my students and my children love this.) First, divide a paper into 4 columns with 6 rows. In the first column, write down WHO..and be creative. Write down 6 different characters... perhaps, a buffalo, a teacher, a praying mantis, my dad, the alien, and the fire fighter. In the second column write down what each of them did (again, be creative). In the third column, write down where they did whatever they did. In the fourth column write down when each of them did whatever they did. Now grab a die and roll it. Let's say you get a four...so on a new sheet of paper, you write down the 4th character...my dad. Roll again...what did he do? If you get a 3, then it says he ate a leaf. Roll again...where...in a spaceship... Roll again...when... ten years ago. So here's your silly sentence...My dad ate a leaf in a spaceship ten years ago. They can then illustrate it or you can have them turn that one sentence into a whole story. Why was my dad in a spaceship eating a leaf? That could turn out to be one interesting story!

8. Make books in the shape of whatever your kid is interested in.

9.To teach summarizing and including important details, try "The 3 sentence challenge." Have students pick an object from a list of 4 related objects. Then in exactly 3 sentences they have to describe the object without using any of the words on the list. IF they describe it well enough that you know what they are describing, they get 5 points. Then switch roles.

10. She is so mean...this is a story with the meanest, nastiest person you can imagine. Take turns writing...each time adding something else to show mean and terrible your character is.

11. That's Good/That's Bad...need a spinner marked with "That's Good"..."That's bad"..."Lose a turn" and "That's Good That's Bad". Spin and if you land on that's good, you write a sentence where something good happens to your character and then end with "That's good." Then it is your child's turn and they spin...if they land on "That's Good. That's Bad." then they write first something good that happens to the character, followed by something bad happening to the character. (YOu might want to read Fortunately, Unfortunately to your child as well.)

12. Acrostic Poems

13. Is it true? Have your child write 3 statements...2 are true and 1 is not. can you guess which is true and which isn't. Now you do the same. Can they guess?

14. Bragging Contests... each person takes turns writing as many brags about a subject as they can...for example..how strong they are... I'm so strong I can lift you with 1 finger. 2nd person: I'm so strong I can pick up an elephant and toss it over my shoulder. And so on. Could also try I'm so rich... I'm so sneaky... I"m so smart... I'm so silly... I'm so happy

15. Make lists...real ones or fun ones (for example, what would you take on a rocket ship through the galaxy)...(What rides do you want to go on at Lagoon?)
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Bravo to Peggy Kaye for all of her wonderful ideas...and there are many more in her book! Thank you!!!

One of my favorite writing projects that my second graders always love is to do How To books. They pick something they know how to do and write all the steps down. They might write how to brush your teeth or how to ride a bike. The love writing the steps and illustrating it. They especially love it if I encourage them to pick a "fun" topic like "How to Make the Teacher (or mom) Mad" or "How to Be Gross in the Cafeteria" and they can write about all the things they aren't supposed to do... They also like "How to be Teacher's Pet" or "How to Make Mom Happy". Giving them permission to write about being naughty brings many of them great pleasure...and gets them anxiously engaged in writing...often a LOT more than is typical on other projects.

Math Bingo

For Halloween, I made up a bingo game. Then I thought, hey, I could play a math bingo game with my students too! SO I did. You can do it too. I made an addition bingo card by making a table with 4 rows and 4 columns (you can draw this by hand or make it on the computer). Then add numbers in each square that would be the answers you might get if adding two numbers 0 to 10 (0 to 20...but you only have 16 squares and you could use the same number more than once). Then either roll two dice (but if you're using dice that only go to 6 then your bingo card should only go from 2 to 12 and should have some repeats) and add the number or use playing cards and flip over the top two cards and add. Check the bingo card and if your sum is on the card, mark it off. The first to get 4 in a row has bingo. Then you can keep playing to black out. You could play this several times and change your bingo card each time...or even keep it the same, as you will get different problems each time.

You could also play subtraction bingo. Put the answers you would get if you subtracted numbers 0-10 and you would have to put the same number in more than one square. Then using the cards, flip over two cards and subtract the smaller number from the bigger number. Then mark your card.

In fact, you could also play multiplication bingo in the same way, making sure that you put multiples of 0 to 10 on the bingo card. Have fun! BINGO!!!

Math Fun!

Every weekend I send a math game home for my students to play with their families. Some of these games have come from our math program or from our district math coach, but some I have found online. I just thought others might want to see where I found some of these great games and might want to try them out as well. Here are two sites that have some fun printable games.

(For online math games, see the links list over on the sidebar.)

Snake and other games to practice addition, subtraction and multiplication (as well as many other skills) were found on this very fun blog, Love 2 learn and share. These are printable card games...and snake was/is very popular in my second grade class.

The website Learn with Math Games is great. I found a couple of printable math games in the section labeled "printable". One was a matching game to match shapes and solids with their name. Another is a game called Honey Hunt that works on patterns. There are other games as well under the other sections... check it out.

Economics lessons

We did a mini-unit on economics. In second grade, our focus is on what a producer and what a consumer is and on understanding what a want is versus a need.

First, we used the darling lesson called Simple Simon Meets a Producer found at Econ Ed. This gives them a good introduction into what a producer is and what a consumer is. Then we talk about ways they are producers and consumers. Each child then wrote a paper listing one or more ways they are a producer and another paper telling what they consume.








After these activities, we begin to talk about wants versus needs. One of the activities I have them do is a sort. There are pictures and they have to sort them by want versus need. This leads to some great discussions. Is a plant a want or need and why? (Some plants provide food and oxygen, for example, but you could survive without house plants. We need shelter, but it does't have to be a huge mansion.) Ultimately, I let each child decide whether something is a want or need. I say that for me, books feel like a need, although I guess I could LIVE without them...but it would be hard, very hard! :) Already they can probably tell that is true for me. Similarly, they wouldn't want to live without their video games, but they could survive.

Golden bookshelf and books about reading

In my classroom, we have lots of books. We use them for Daily 5 and we use them for read alouds. The books are on shelves built into the wall. But on the counter, we have one small but very special shelf called our "Golden Bookshelf". (This idea came from Steven Layne's book Igniting a Passion for Reading: Successful Strategies for Building Lifetime Readers). Each week, I put some wonderful books on the golden bookshelf.

Our school uses Storytown for language arts. So I try to tie the books on the golden bookshelf to that week's main selection...either thematically or by doing an author study or topically.

Last week, our main selection was Arthur's Reading Race by Marc Brown. Arthur doesn't think D.W. can read and says if she can read ten words while they are taking a walk, he will buy her an ice cream cone. We talked about how reading helped her (kept her safe, helped her prove she can read, allowed her to help Arthur) and how reading can help us (be smart, learn new things, have fun, get good jobs, help others, keep us safe).

So for the golden bookshelf, our books were all about reading. Here are the titles that I chose to spotlight this time:

Thank You, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco is one of my all time favorite books. Polacco had a hard time learning to read, but a special fifth grade teacher helped her to learn. This is her story of learning to read.

How to Teach a Slug to Read by Susan Pearson gives the mama slug step-by-step directions on how to teach her little slug to read. Many of the steps are true for young children, but some are especially for slugs. Cute.

Miss Dorothy and her Bookmobile by Gloria Houston is a sweet, true story of a woman who wants to be a librarian in a beautiful, big library. But she and her husband move to a rural area where there isn't a library. So this innovative woman helps the town buy a bookmobile which she drives all over so that people can check out books. Gorgeous illustrations and sweet ending.

Edward and the Pirates by David McPhail...One night while Edward is reading, the pirates in his book come to life and think his book will tell them where their treasure is hidden. If you've ever felt a story come to life in your mind...or wished that it would REALLY come to life, this is the book for you!

No T. Rex in the Library by Toni Buzzeo is the story of what would happen if there were a dinosaur trampling all the books in the library. Fun vocabulary in this rhyming book.

Wild about Books by Judy Sierra The library bookmobile comes to the zoo and the animals fall in love with books. Great illustrations and fun story.

Hooray for Reading Day by Judy Sierra In this story, Jessica is nervous about reading aloud to her class. But her dad helps her to know that she can do it and after practicing with her dog, she does a great job. Great for kids that find reading difficult or find reading aloud in front of their peers to be scary.

How Rocket Learned to Read by Tad Hills is the story of a cute dog that is taught how to read by a bird.