Camping Math Partner Challenge

This week, we wanted to have some fun with math and review everything that we've learned in math this year in second grade. In order to do this, we are going through a math challenge that had to do with a camping trip. Students were placed in "teams" with partners and they were all given task #1. Each task had a different goal for the camping trip. For instance, one task involved the students choosing a camp site based off of the number of campers the family was bringing and how much money they had to spend. Another task involved the students calculating how many trips it would take the family to haul wood to their campsite when they needed 50 pieces of wood and could only haul a few pieces at a time.

Once teams completed each task, they brought it up to me and once I checked their answers, they went on to the next task. We started this activity on Monday and we finally finished it today with our winning team: Daniel and Carter. Second graders did an excellent job of reviewing what they have learned throughout this year and having fun as they worked together with their partner to solve these challenging problems. Great job second graders!

Guess Yes or No

This week I wanted to test out a new way of comprehending an informational text since I've been learning about that in one of the graduate courses that I'm currently taking. One way that students can learn within an informational text is through a strategy called "Guess Yes or No". In this strategy, students are given a piece of paper with 15 statements on it. Before reading through the text, the students have to make a decision on whether the statement is true or false. If they think it's true, they write a "y" next to it for yes and if they think it's false they write an "n" next to it for no. After guessing, the students then partnered up and read the text to decipher whether or not their guesses were correct or not. If their guesses were not correct, students fix their guesses as they read. If the statement turned out to be false, students had to cross out one word that made it false and change it to make the statement true based on what they read. Students utilized this strategy as we read through our social studies textbook and learned about the early history of America.

Students did an excellent job in learning how to use this strategy as they read through the social studies textbook. We will definitely be using this strategy again as we read through more informational texts.

Easter Egg Drop

To have fun with science for Easter, our second graders participated in an egg drop experiment. For this egg drop experiment, students were told that they would be given a partner to work with and they would have to plan out together how they would save their Easter egg from total annihilation when I threw it up in the air and let it land on the hard floor. In order to save their Easter egg, students would be given two paper towels, one small strip of bubble wrap, one small strip of foam, five rubber bands, and one toilet paper roll. They were told that they would first need to plan out how they would save their egg, bring up their plan to me, and once I approved their plan, they could then begin to create their "armor" for their poor egg friend.

Once the plans were approved, students enjoyed decorating and naming their egg (apparently Bob is a common name for eggs...) before they began to build the protective barrier around the egg.

Students finished up protecting their eggs and then it was time to test their egg armor. All of the eggs were thrown up to the ceiling in the C2C room and then they all dropped to the hard cement floor. Once the eggs all dropped, students uncovered the egg to discover whether or not their poor egg friend made the fall. In the end, we discovered that three out of eight eggs survived the fall!

Together we discussed what made these three eggs survive the fall rather than the other five eggs and what kind of egg armor is best for our poor little egg friends. Our second graders enjoyed this "egg-speriment" throughout this Easter science activity!