This is a guest post from our library media specialist, Beth Redford.
Second graders have been researching, writing, illustrating, and posting blog entries about animals on the new RES Second Grade Animal Blog! The scholars used the PebbleGo.Com research database to learn about animals. Then each scholar wrote the text for his or her blog entry, drew an illustration, and typed the text and added the illustration with the Blogger iPad app. The second graders focused on writing interesting "hooks" to draw readers' attention at the beginnings of their posts; using transition words at the beginning of sentences; writing conclusions at the ends of their posts; and citing PebbleGo as their source.
The second graders had a great time with this short, focused research project, and they were very proud to share their work on the blog. The last few entries will be posted next week and after holiday break. Please leave comments on these posts if you see something interesting or surprising!
It was a wonderful day today with so many activities happening! We spent time with our first grade buddies in Mrs. Lister's class making snowflakes, received a visit from Professor Snow who showed us how to make fake snow, and drinking hot chocolate! It was great to see teamwork, students complimenting each other, and enjoying each other's company. Spending time with our first grade buddies is something we look forward to each month!
We also explored the concept of pitch during our science centers! Pitch can be low or high and we learned how size, shape, and tension can change pitch. The stations we explored were: xylophones, musical bottles, and rubber band guitars. After exploring we shared our findings as a class. Our observations were: if an object is long, loose, thick, or full of water it will produce a low pitch. If an object is short, tight, skinny, or fairly empty with water it will produce a high pitch. We had a great time exploring this sound concept!
Second graders are currently learning about sound in their science unit. Students are expected to answer the following questions by the end of the unit: how are different sounds produced, and how can sounds be changed or altered? Today students rotated through four different stations all exploring vibration. Our stations were: feeling vibrations, vibrations in water, glitter dancing, and vibrations with ping pong balls. Each student was expected to complete the experiment and record their scientific findings! Some student quotes from the experiments: "Wow! Look at this!" "This is awesome!" "Science was fun today!" "I can feel the vibrations on my lips!" We will be completing stations on pitch and volume in the next few days!
Yesterday, second graders started researching animals for the RES Second grade Animal Blog. As part of the Common Core technology standards, students need to research and share their findings in a digital way. Students selected an animal and will be completing blog posts to share with our community. This is a great connection to our writing unit of informational books. Thank you to Beth Redford for all of her support to make this project run smoothly! Stay tuned for the completed blog!
