Keeping Room Diorama #resvt

Second grade students are currently learning about "Our Founding Families" for our first social studies unit. Scholars have been learning vocabulary words, reading non-fiction articles, and creating projects to learn about how life was like during Pilgrim times. This week, second graders have been working on their "Keeping Room Dioramas". A keeping room, is a one room house where the Pilgrims ate, slept and did their daily living. Ask your child what they included in their keeping room!

Exploring Geoblocks! #resvt

On Wednesday, second grade mathematicians started their second unit in Investigations titled "Shapes, Blocks, and Symmetry". In this unit, scholars will be working with geoblocks, 2-D and 3-D shapes, students will be able to identify polygons, rectangles, and quadrilaterals and work on subtraction strategies. Today, we explored geoblocks and introduced a new math vocabulary word: face.

Stuffed Animal and Pajama Day! #resvt

On Wednesday, second graders celebrated their hard work of following the three school-wide expectations! Those expectations are: respect yourself, respect others, and respect your environment. Our class celebrated with bringing in our favorite stuffed animal and wearing pajamas! It was a fabulous day!

 

 

Spotlight on: Grade 2 Library Classes

This is a guest post by RES teacher librarian Beth Redford.

Second grade library classes have been sharing folk tales from around the world. We have been connecting the retellers' storytelling styles to the scholars' own storytelling in their classroom Writing Workshops. We have enjoyed folk tales from the countries of India (One Grain of Rice, shown above),

Liberia,

Japan,

Wales,

and Benin (Dahomey).

all cover images from Amazon.com

Mayflower Voyage #resvt

On Friday, second grade scholars discussed the living conditions of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower. As part of our social studies curriculum unit "The Founding Families" scholars take an in depth look at the lives of the Pilgrims and compare it to their lives today. As a class we tried to fit 18 people in a 4x4 square that resembled the living quarters on the Mayflower. It wasn't comfortable! We also tried hard crackers (hardtack), salted meat (beef jerky), and seltzer water that resembled the basic food choices the Pilgrims ate for 66 days! This activity made the struggles on the Mayflower come alive to our second graders!