Second Grade Rock Stars
Tour News!
Researching about Endangered Animals
Next on tour: Upcoming Events
Coming on Tour Soon:
- 04/16: International Festival
- 04/16-04/22: Scholastic Book Fair
- 04/18: SBAC Testing begins for grades 3-8
- 04/20: Love and Logic Parenting Class at 6pm in the DP Cafeteria
- 04/22: Earth Day
- 04/27: Love and Logic Parenting Class at 6pm in the DP Cafeteria
- 04/29: Field Trip to Explorit Science Museum in Davis
- 05/02-05/06: Teacher Appreciation Week
- 05/04: Love and Logic Parenting Class at 6pm in the DP Cafeteria
- 05/05: WAVE Coffee Talk at 6pm
- 05/05: WAVE Board Meeting at 6:30pm
- 05/11: WAVE Game Night
- 05/12: WCS Board Meeting
- 05/20: Spirit Day: Mix and Match Clothing Day
- 05/25: Open House on Del Paso
Did you miss seeing the dunk tank at the International Festival?
Our Highlights: What We've Been Rockin' At!
Get ready parents...these Rock Stars are learning persuasive techniques! We learned how to organize a persuasive writing piece on Friday and then we tested out our skills by writing to persuade for no homework this week. Most of the students had some pretty good reasons! We learned that reasons are best when it has an effect on others besides yourself. I especially love the reason "You already have enough homework as it is with your Master's classes, that's just adding more for you to grade." (true, true) or the "My parents would also love not having homework because I won't be waiting until the last minute to complete it." (I understand your pain, parents!). Check out a few students reading theirs, by clicking here.
Students designed their own plant experiments to really test out whether plants need sunlight and water. They decided that there needed to be plants that are normal (control plants) and plants that we test out to switch instead of water and plants that we test out to switch instead of sunlight (changing the variable). My personal favorite that they came up with is the plant that will be replacing sunlight with microwave energy.
Awareness for Endangered Animals
As we have been moving from People Who Made a Difference to our next unit, we have been bridging the two units by thinking a lot about how we can make a positive difference in the world and we have reflected on how difference makers in the past helped spark change.
What happens when you give students a poster size paper and ask them to brainstorm ideas in groups of how they think that we could make a positive world change? Awesomeness...that's what happens! They developed out of the box thinking after much brainstorming and many of their ideas are surprising based on how little life experience they have! Then we did gallery walk to see each group's ideas. Later, we rotated our poster to another group. With this new paper, we put a star next to what we thought would be the top 3 ideas of what we can do as a class. Then we rotated the papers again and circled the top two out of the starred three. We continued until we had a top one from each group and then we shared them out and brainstormed how we can make them happen. Three of them had to do with helping the environment and animals and another 3 of them had to do with helping people who don't have a home. See if you can find some great collaborators and communicators for yourself by watching the students in action. Something to note is that we realized that change is never caused by one person alone. Even amazing inventors had a buddy they called up for advice or brainstormed ideas off of. It takes collaboration and communication to help make something that is good to be better or even to help make someone's voice to be heard.
We have been jumping into our next unit of Endangered Animals and Advocacy. Students will be researching an endangered animal and learning about its ecosystem, habitat, and niche. They will also be learning about why that animal is endangered and coming up with real world solutions to try to solve and help that animal from becoming extinct. From there, students will create a way to advocate for that animal, it could be in the form of a YouTube Public Service Announcement, beginning a foundation, writing to congress, etc. It's about not only learning, but advocating for others. Almost all students have picked the endangered animal that they are interested in. We used the World Wildlife Foundation website to find out about some of the most endangered animals and learn more about them along with reading lots of books on endangered animals.
Our very own Susan Ramones presented about her exciting career as a biologist as well as what an ecosystem, a biome, a habitat, and a niche are. Susan even gave us some expert tips on what to focus on while looking up information about our endangered animal. In addition, Susan also led our school Nature Bowl team. Check out the video of the Nature Bowl recap below!
Rockin' and Rollin' into Next Week!
Reading: Poetry and Persuasive Techniques
Writing: Forming a Persuasive Paragraph
Language: Root words, prefixes, suffixes, and figurative language (alliteration, metaphors, similes, etc.)
Theme: Endangered Animals and Advocacy
Mathematician Magician
Questions to ask your Rock Star...
- What endangered animals are you interested in learning about?
- Why do you think some animals are endangered?
- What is an ecosystem? A habitat? A niche?
- How does one become a Mathematician Magician?
- How do you think you can change the world in a positive way?
- Can you answer the Math Monday problem? CLICK HERE to get to it each week! Remember to answer in a complete sentence. Extra points for explaining what strategy you used!
Contact the Band Manager!
Second Grade Teacher
Westlake Charter School
Email: jmartin@westlakecharter.com
Website: http://MrsMartinsRockStars.weebly.com
Phone: 916-567-5760
Twitter: @MrsMartinsRoom