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Our class anchor chart...we will continue to add ideas as the year goes on.
Helping students to develop these qualities underlies everything that happens in Room 202. Stay tuned for more. |
Questions to Ask: How do empathy and perseverance help us to become better learners? Can you think of any empathy or perseverance examples from the picture books below? What are some examples from your class, or your own work? (note to parents: being able to "feel someone else's feelings in your heart" helps students to solve conflicts with peers more easily, it also helps with comprehending deeper messages in texts, understanding character motivations, helps to develop the skill of "mentalization" - the ability to understand the mental states that underlie are own as well as other people's actions)
Students are writing Small Moment stories (otherwise known as Pea vs. Pod stories). Have a look at some of their planning work and first drafts. Thank you to Ms. S for starting this work while I was away.
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Students sorted big ideas for stories (pod) and inside big idea's (Pea stories)
as a whole class |
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On their own, students brainstormed a big idea they could write about, and then a small idea within that
(a Small Moment). Here Pyper shows that she could write about going to the beach, or she
could focus in on swimming with her family at the beach (which is
what I am looking for students to do)! |
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Students selected an idea and sketched a plan for the first,
second, and third pages of their story. I refer to the second page as the "boom", or the
most important part of the story. Lukas is planning to write about the drive to Montreal. |
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Lukas is working to pull the reader into his story on the first page. He is setting the scene
for his "boom". Lukas is trying to show that going to Montreal is a special
trip for his family. |
Questions to ask: How is your Pea story going? Why did you select the idea that you did? What are you trying to show the reader? What are some interesting word choices that you made? What kinds of details can you add to stretch your story out (dialogue, telling the actions of the story, but also including how you felt and what you were thinking, setting out the who, what, where, why, when and how)?
We are all Wonders and Dot! These two picture books helped to inspire our collaborative art piece below. Students voted on a name for the piece and "Wonder: Square Dot Collage" came out on top.
Questions to Ask: Which colours did you mix together to create your dot "tile"? How many colours were you able to make? What happened when you added white? How did you feel/think when we combined everyone's tiles together? How does our art show the ideas from "Dot" and "We are All Wonders"?
In math we continue to work on patterning. Students do not always see the link between patterning and mathematics, but it is foundational for future work and understanding of algebra. That is why we teach the students about pattern families, and giving letter terms to patterns (so that they see that though patterns may look different, they may share an underlying mathematical structure). I also use our unit on patterning to begin teaching problem solving strategies (Guess and check, make a model & draw a diagram have been discussed so far) that they will use throughout the year in more difficult contexts.
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To show their thinking, students needed to build models using snap cubes.
Because snap cubes are all the same size and shape, students will have colour in their patterns,
but are challenged to think of ways to introduce other attributes. Including "number" will link repeating patterns to growing patterns, which is an important connection in Grade 2. |
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| This is an example of what students typically cane up with first. The pattern repeats black and green with 3 cubes and 2 cubes. |
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| After a while, the students became much more creative! Here you can see height, shape, number and colour as attributes. |
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| Now we have a growing pattern to look at (2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1, 4 and so on). This will be an interesting structure to use in order to explore pattern rules (instead of me just telling students what a pattern rule is)! |
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| Students were so proud of their snap cube creations that they were late to lunch! We will use these models to learn more about patterning next week. |
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Pairs of students were given a pattern family, and they came up with as many patterns
as they could that would fit that family. Here Ella & Jadyn are using "ABC". You can see examples of attributes like colour, shape and size. Students revised their work after we discussed and share as a class to practice
some strategies for communication (labelling the letter structure, circling the patterns to differentiate one from the next, showing that they understand the pattern "core" or the part of the pattern that repeats. |
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This anchor chart shows the student understanding that came out of the activity. We always work and explore first
and then use our work to guide learning, and knowledge building afterward. Using student work to do this is more authentic, and engaging (they always want to show off what they did as it is projected onto the screen)! |
Questions to Ask: What kinds of attributes might you see changing in a pattern? How do you define a "pattern"? Why do we want to repeat the pattern core 3 times (otherwise we do not have enough information to determine what the rule for the pattern is)? How did you use the problems above to show that you can persevere in math? Can you draw an example of a repeating pattern? A growing pattern? How do you like doing math work best, with a partner or on your own? Why is important to listen and contribute during math discussions? How can you show that you respect and appreciate a classmate's thinking and solution, but give an idea to show how they can improve their work? Do you feel comfortable having your math work looked at and discussed by the class?
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