Park Specialists' Newsletter
Second Grade Edition - Third Trimester
Third Trimester Recap
From Park's Art Instructor - Mrs. Ovadje
Half of the 2nd grade classrooms at Park Elementary switched from ART to STEM specialist in January, and vise-versa. In art, we explore many materials and students work hands-on with a variety of materials including markers, crayons, watercolor paint, tempera paint, collage, chalk pastels, oil pastels, printmaking, paint sticks and clay. While making art, we also explore line, shape, color, texture, value, form, and space.
Projects we have completed:
Dots! based on Peter Reynold’s book “The Dot”
Fruit Still -Lifes in pencil and chalk pastel
The “Starry Night”, inspired by Impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh
Wacky Picasso Portraits
Choice based art inspired by Mondrian
Seashell drawings and Pop Art Printmaking
Students kept their artwork in their portfolio and brought them home the last week of school.
We had a fabulous year in Art.
Until next fall,
Mrs. Ovadje
From Park's Librarian - Ms. Shadis
PTO Reading Tree
Many Second graders earned a FREE prize book by reading three hours outside of school time and returning the clock sheet to school.
Poem In Your Pocket
Students selected and carried a Poem in their Pocket, Friday April 12. This was an exciting day as Arts & Academics and the Buy One Get One FREE Book Fair were concurrently occurring.
Library Time
This trimester, second graders enjoyed some great stories during library time. (Pictured below)
Author Visit
Students prepared for a visit by Illustrator David Geister by listening to some of his books and looking at his historical illustrations. Www.davidgeister.com
From Park's Technology Integration Instructor - Mr. Durheim
During the third trimester, second graders focused on computational thinking and coding in several ways.
Isle of Tune is a website which bridges the visual art with sound. Students design an island with items such as roads, trees, and houses. Then they “play” their code by adding cars to the roads.
The Foos is a favorite online game for many students. Students create code using walk and jump commands to help the characters accomplish their goals such as collecting donuts or lost pets.
Run Marco! Required students to stretch their thinking beyond moving a character left/right/up/down using code. In this game, students needed to think about the character in a 3D world moving forward/backward/left/right.
Computational thinking puzzles were used as warm-ups and provided opportunities for students to develop thinking and problem solving skills as well as build better mouse control skills.
Online safety is an ongoing a focus of TechTime. Educating our students about using good netiquette and making good safety and privacy choices online must be a collaborative effort between school and home.
Please visit the TechTime website to learn more about specific activities, website links, and learning goals.
Second grade students all had the opportunity to record Park’s multimedia Daily Announcements. Anyone can view these videos on Park’s website.
Keyboarding
Park’s keyboarding program provides students the opportunity to learn keyboarding skills as part of the specialist rotation schedule. This time is a combination of self-paced work through Typing Quest and other guided practice and instruction. Students, especially those for whom this is a second year of keyboarding instruction, are making good progress.
Continued practice through the summer will help to maintain skills learned and help students to become more efficient. The Park Elementary “For Students” webpage has a link to keyboarding practice websites. You will find it at www.isd423.org/park-elementary/for-students/
From Park's Phy Ed Educators - Mrs. Hahn & Ms. Mueller
Physical Education
Mrs.Hahn and Ms. Mueller
P. E. Specialists
Even though the weather was not always cooperative, we took advantage of every
opportunity to be outdoors. Encourage your child to continue keeping active this summer.
Units covered in the third trimester:
● Juggling
● Hockey
● Lawn Games
● Capture the Flag
● Fitness Tests (Students stopped each test when healthy fitness zone was reached)
● Tennis Stations
● Track and Field (see video clips below)
Here are a few ideas for kids to keep active this summer using technology. Here are some
fun apps that will get kids to exercise.
● Sworkit Kids
● 7 Min Workout for Kids
● Go Noodle Kids
From Park's Music Teachers - Ms. Hauth & Mrs. Hoeft
Students in second grade continue to learn new notes and rhythms as they prepare for more challenging music in third grade next year. The new rhythm they worked on was the half note and the new solfege notes they added to Music Street were sol and la. Songs that focused on these new concepts included Rain Rain Go Away, Pitter Patter, and I Had a Cat. Students composed songs using the half note rhythm and improvised rhythms and melodies using percussion instruments and the xylophones and shared them with their classmates. They’ve also started working on rhythms and songs in 6/8 meter, such as Oh My, Fish in the Sky and Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be? as well as many other common nursery rhymes.
Second grade has learned about the families of the orchestra (woodwind, brass, percussion, and strings), using composer Benjamin Britten’s piece The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Many second graders also were able to hear some live demonstrations of a few of the instruments, including the violin, clarinet, and trumpet.
Dances and games learned this trimester included Miss Mary Mack, The Cookie Jar Chant, Mirrorland, London Bridge, Bela Kawe, Amasee and Paw Paw Patch.
From Park's STEM Specialist - Mrs. McDowell
Throughout all of the STEM projects students are continually following the Engineering Design Process to ask questions, plan, create, make observations and improve their designs along the way. Check out what your child/student has been up to these last couple of months in STEM!
Airplanes! Following their catapult project (which took place in March), 2nd graders worked on another project that involved force and motion. They created paper airplanes that could hold a set amount of cargo (aka washers.) We had groups that built airplanes that could hold as many as 12 washers and still be flown in a straight line over a distance of 9+ feet! In order to get a better understanding of how paper airplanes work, students tested several paper airplane designs and discussed why certain ones flew better than others and what the best design would be for their project. We also discussed different forces (gravity, lift, drag and thrust) and their role in getting the airplane to fly properly.
We ended this project with a Final Flight day in which students got to showcase
their paper airplanes to their class, discuss the differences of each and why some
planes worked better than others.
Renewable Energy Vehicles! In April and May, 2 nd graders ended their last
trimester building a vehicle that could be powered by the renewable energy of
wind. After having several discussions about what renewable energy is, how it
can be used and why it’s energy efficient, they started the designing process.
They brainstormed, created a blueprint, discussed their ideas with their group
and began to build, test and make improvements to their vehicle along the way.
On our final race day, students competed to see whose car could go the furthest
in 30 seconds on a track that was set up in the little theater. We had great
discussions as to why certain cars performed better than others and how students
might change their car if they were provided with more time to make improvements. Pictured Above: Students from Mrs. Olberg’s room look on as they test and make improvements to their car design.
Instant STEM Challenge! To conclude the school year, we took our last 4 days
together to do one final STEM project. The glory of this project was that each
group of 2 students go to fulfill their very own mission and had access to any
supply they could think of! Their mission was determined by having each group
randomly draw a card from a stack of cards that had different STEM challenges on
them. These cards asked the students to build, invent or design something new.
This meant that everyone in the class was working on something different, which
was at times hectic, but a lot of fun! In the end, all students got to share their
new inventions with the rest of their classmates and explain how it worked. We
had several great ideas ranging from inventing a new dog toy, to building
something new (that didn’t already exist) a gardener would love.
Mrs. Harlander
Mrs. Langins
Mrs. Neubarth
Park Elementary School
Email: dan.olberg@isd423.org
Website: isd423.org/park-elementary/
Location: 100 Glen Street Southwest, Hutchinson, MN, United States
Phone: (320) 587-2837
Twitter: @parkelem