Tuesday Three: Bats, Mystery Reader, Ojo de Dios

We've been rather busy here in second grade.  There simply aren't enough days between Halloween and Thanksgiving.  We pushed through our Pilgrims unit at a clipping pace.  We created wetus and wooden houses (more on that in a later post), imagined what the Pilgrims might have packed on their voyage, and made symbolic "shells" (really bits of pasta) to give to our friends as tokens of affection.



Our inaugural Mystery Reader was a smashing hit!  The kids had 5 clues about this mystery person.  They mulled over them all day long.  We knew this person had two brothers and a sister.  She taught dance to kids.  She was born in a different country.  All day, these young lawyers attempted to bargain and coax the information to be revealed.  Their skills in rhetoric are impressive, but I would not give.  It was very exciting when Frannie, Mia's aunt, walked through our door!  She read us Jamie O'Rourke and the Giant Potato.  We were full of questions to ask!

Thank you, Frannie!  And we'll be on the lookout for more Mystery Readers soon.

On to nocturnal animals.  Our first spotlighted creature was the bat.  Did you know that there are about 1,000 types of bats?  The smallest is the bumblebee bat.  The largest is the Samoan flying fox.  Vampire bats exist, but their little fangs are only after cows.  Bats have thumbs.  There are grouped into two types:  Microbat and Megabat.

We've been doing a lot of bat-related reading.  This reading will culminate as a small version of an encyclopedia.  We aim to be bat masters.  I think we're succeeding.

Brooke highlights and writes a section of her encyclopedia.

Kevin scores the dashed lines of the bat.  This figure will become a "pop up" in the center of each encyclopedia.

Finally, we created Ojo de Dios with popsicle sticks and yarn.  Believe me, there's a lesson in this!

Nice work, Natalie!

Ojo de Dios (God's Eye) is a traditional religious craft made by the Huichol Indians of Mexico.  They are believed to watch over the recipient.  Before our craft, we discussed the various ways in which God is always looking out for us.  There is so much to learn from the faith of kids.  They are open and honest about everything.  It's really inspiring.  Becoming a second grade teacher really affirmed my faith in God.  Sharing ideas and experiences is really powerful for these students.  They enjoyed the symbolism and the significance of this craft.  It was tricky - very tricky - to master the weaving technique, but we were old pros once we figured out the code.



Second grade is busy, busy, busy - but I wouldn't want it any other way.

Steal the Clock!

Howard Gardner didn't develop his theory of multiple intelligences for it to remain unpracticed!  Second graders want to utilize every facet of their (astounding, and at times alarming) intelligence.  We've got a bunch of music geniuses in here.  Many of us clamor to show off our math and spatial smarts on the daily.  We don't neglect any of them - that includes our "body smarts".

Being body smart means being active.  We maneuver.  We balance.  And most of all we run.

Running in a field is great fun, but we look for a way to make it more challenging.  Let's combine two intelligences.  Let's show our math and body smarts all at once.

And thus, Steal the Clock was born.

Now, I'm not going to say that Steal the Clock is a smashing hit every year.  There are years when students simply don't itch to compete and yell and cheer.

This year, our second graders have a very, very healthy competitive streak.  They are very math smart.  They are very body smart.

Each child is assigned a number.  Each student shares a number with a member of the opposing team.  When a math problem is called out, the kids work in their teams to arrive at the solution.  If a student's number matches the solution, they race for the clock in my hand.  They must grab it and run it back to their teammates without getting tagged.

I have never played Steal the Clock without getting a stitch in my side.  The kids solve tough math problems.  They race for the clock.  They scream and cheer.  I laugh.

We are good sports through all of it.  Exercise and tricky math never felt so good.

Andrew tries to finagle his way past Grace.  Grace has good defense skills!

Our teams watch a race play out.

Love the action shot.  Natalie crouches down, Mia is jumping for joy and Ben is sprinting to a teammate.

Mealworms

Mealworms are not gross.  Mealworms.  are.  not.  gross.

This is the mantra that I mutter to myself as I pass out the plastic dishes containing individual mealworm abodes.  I need to mutter it under my breath, a little crazily, because I can't let the kids hear me.  Much like parental influence, there is such thing as teacher influence, too.  If the kids see that I am less than impressed with these tiny, wriggly creatures, they might strike the same tune.  I don't want them to sing my scaredy cat tune.  I want them to sing the brave and objective tune of scientists and observers.

So we press on, oats and apple slices in hand, to learn about these curious specimens.

We learn that mealworms aren't actually worms.  They are in their 2nd of 4 growth stages, the larval stage.  They are in the stage where they eat, and rest, and eat, and rest, ad nauseum.  This lifestyle will enable the mealworms to move forward into the next stage, the pupa.  Once they are finished with the pupa stage, they become darkling beetles. 

I will not lie.  I will not say that our classroom was a hushed laboratory as we coaxed the mealworms from their cozy plastic border homes.  

The classroom was full of noise and occasional muted screams as our insect charges wriggled, escaped, got lost under desks...

But we pressed on.  Again.

We measured.  We observed features.  Six legs.  Antennae.  Body shaped like a cylinder.

We inspected via magnifying glass.  We saw two eyes.  We saw different shades of color.

We invented elaborate play pens for the mealworms so that they could no longer escape our clutches.

We had the best time.  Even this scaredy cat teacher.  We charted the average length of our mealworm set:  3 centimeters.

Huh.  3 centimeters.  Such a tiny little insect but so much energy and features of interest.

Being an elementary school teacher is like constantly facing your fight or flight instincts.  I knew that I was "done for", proverbially speaking, when a cricket visited my classroom on my second day EVER as a teacher.  Its shiny, terrifying black eyes stared up at me defiantly while 13 sets of human eyes looked at me expectantly.

I couldn't take flight.  I had to fight.

And by fight, I mean that I had to stay calm.  I had to pretend to be at peace with this gross bug.  I had to enlist a tiny scientist to dispose of it humanely.  Bugs are a part of the game in second grade.  I accepted that begrudgingly, and I accepted it immediately.

Kids teach you a lot.  They help you get over your fears in a lot of ways.  I never thought we would study mealworms.  But we did it.  We did it because they have taught me so much.

Mariana is calm as she assesses the length of the mealworm.

Sophia is learning that her mealworm likes to be evasive.

Mia and Julia trade best practices for mealworm observation.

Hannah helps Kevin with measuring.

Brilliant!  Mariana, if you're inventing this sort of contraption in second grade, I'm going to be amazed at the inventions you create when you're older.

Julia takes careful notes (and names her insect) as we work to determine the average mealworm length.

Success!  3 centimeters is our final answer.

Goodbye Election... Hello Creatures of the Night!

I know that you were waiting with baited breath to hear the results of 2A's Presidential election....

  

 With 63% of the vote, our class enthusiastically backed the Republican ticket of Romney/Ryan!

We were saddened to learn that our candidates did not fare quite as well in the national election ;)

All politics aside, this election was so much fun to study.  We learned about past presidents, studied the 3 branches of government, had spirited debates (Should the school year be only 3 months long?) and made paper models of that famous house on Pennsylvania Avenue.

And feel as you might about the confusing electoral college, it is an EXCELLENT source for some geography and math challenges.

Grace bravely begins our journey to chart and tally all 50 states.

We love this process because it combines state recognition, increasingly difficult addition, and some pretty fierce auditory comprehension.  Montana, mighty in size, has a mere 3 electoral votes.  Why is that?  What are the trends across our country?  Why do people vote Democrat in New England and Republican in the South?

Andrew colors just a line through Florida because the decision wasn't quite official this morning!

Success!  America charted.

But not without a whole ton of paper work!

                                                       So, Goodbye Elections Unit...


                                                   ... Hello, Creatures of the Night!

Bonus points if you can identify what the top right photo is.. the kids don't know it yet, but they'll be doing it soon!

We begin our study with bats.  Did you know that the biggest bat is the Samoan Flying Fox?  Its wingspan is 79 inches!  The smallest bat is the Bumblebee bat.  Bats even have thumbs.  They hunt by using their awesome echolocation abilities.  When they're flying erratically through the air, they're really master pilots, diving and twirling to catch their prey:  tasty moths, mosquitoes and flies.

Great illustrations to accompany your graphic organizer, Sophia!

These notes will help us out when it comes time to write a mini encyclopedia on some of the more interesting creatures of the night.


Check back to find out how our meal worm investigation goes!  This is the very first time I've tried it - these scientists are up for taking on some worms, but I don't know if I am...

Becoming Young Pilgrims

Thanksgiving.  The holiday that has been stereotyped into oblivion.  The holiday that is all about Turkey, with a capital T, and the Redskins/Cowboys game.  I hope that RGIII skips on the tryptophan this year and saves it all for Tony Romo.

Thanksgiving is a beloved holiday, but it just cannot compete with its festive peer that looms a mere month and a few days after it.

Except in my classroom.  In my classroom, Thanksgiving is king.



At last we have begun our study of horn books and religious tolerance, of feast and of famine, of the people who set sail nearly 400 years ago for a chance to live the way that they wanted to.

We marvel at the details.  The pilgrims and the sailors on the Mayflower had a ship as large as two trucks, but it was not big enough.  We try to figure out why the beef and fish needed to be salted in order to survive the trip.  We try to imagine how life would feel on a dark and cold ship for 2 months and 3 days.  We try to feel the excitement that the pilgrims might have felt when they at last saw land, and the fear they might have had when they had to start life from scratch.

Our favorite topic is always the Pilgrim kids.  What would life have been like for these kids?  We start to find many more differences than similarities.

Great cover, Hannah!

We dress differently, sure.  We also live, work, and even eat very differently.  The pilgrim kids had to work as hard as the adults did.  They made their own mattresses by finding materials like feathers, pine needles, leaves, and corn husks.  They were in charge of cooking large roasts by turning the food on a spit.  This process often took an entire day.

Natalie refines her compare and contrast skills.

They had no spoons for dining.  Instead, they used shells and even their fingers.  We did not like to learn that children were not allowed to sit when they were eating.  They could only speak when spoken to.

We use our notes and our memories to pick out the important facts.

We learn that Pilgrim children had horn books.  These flat boards contained the alphabet.  Children learned to read by studying the Bible.  If a child really loved to read, he or she would have to read whatever materials that the adults read.

James illustrates the emotions that the Pilgrims felt.

We really, really enjoyed learning that Pilgrim boys wore dresses until they were six years old!

I love this initial Thanksgiving/Pilgrims project because it asks the kids to become social scientists.  We utilize different books and handouts in order to learn as much as we can about these people who set forth on a long journey to lead new lives.  A simple flip book becomes a small encyclopedia about these people who lived so long before us.


And we give thanks.  We give thanks for learning and sharing our ideas.  We give thanks for the lives that we have.  We feel glad to have learned about the Pilgrims, but we're fortunate to live during the era that we do.

Tiny Project Managers: Tin Foil Boats

Buoyancy.  The ability to float in water.  Simple concept, but plenty of wiggle room in which to question, craft, and experiment.

Grad school was good for a few things, two of them sticking out in my mind as exceptional.  It was exceptional for introducing me to lifelong friends who had also heard the siren song of becoming an educator.  Those folks at my grad school fueled my enthusiasm for education and taught me that I was not crazy for wanting to teach.  They are bright minds with huge hearts.

The other exceptional gift of grad school was a veritable trough of great ideas.  There were lesson plans and even briefer ideas, pooled together in a continuous brainstorm.  As teachers-to-be, we grad students taught each other.  Tin foil boats are just one of a thousand good ideas that I have learned from teacher friends.

Tin foil boats are small but rugged.  They are constructed from a single 4 by 4 inch square of foil.

When I told the kids to make a tin foil boat, the lag time was priceless.

They kept waiting for elaboration.  How do we do it?  What's the first step?

The first step is to brainstorm, you see.  Commune with your inner architect.  Build the sturdiest boat that you can imagine.

No small demand, especially considering the sparse materials that we were working with.

We wanted to see exactly how much freight our boats could handle.  In our case, the "freight" were some glossy marble-type stones, most often found in fish tanks.

As true scientists, we were able to conduct two trials.  The initial boats were pretty impressive, but oh, did we learn from that first trial.  Our second tries were mightier, sturdier, more confident.

It was so awesome to watch these scientists at work, as they examined the various designs of the boats.  They monitored what worked, what didn't work so well.  They dutifully charted.  And they realized that it was not about which boat could hold the most stones (though that was cool to see!) - it was about trial and error, documentation, and making your second boat better after learning from the first.

Fun, simple, inexpensive experiments.  With lots of learning and working together.  Bliss in a classroom.

Love Mariana's constant enthusiasm and determination.  Excellent boat!

Andrew and James confer about best practices :)

Some of us are on tip toes in excitement to see how many stones this boat will hold!