Health Day Take Two!

This week, students took part in the second round of our health-day event.  Students went to different 2nd grade classes to learn about dental health, physical health, germs & cleanliness, healthy eating, stress, and physical exercise.  Students got to explore the benefits of living a healthy life and got to describe the  barriers preventing healthy living.  

Here is a summary of what happened in our classroom:

​In Langauge Arts... 

• This week in Unit 5, Week 4 students are learning how characters respond to major events are challenges.   Addressing standard 2.RL.3 Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges, students identified the problem in a story and determined the steps to the solution that characters took.  After having a better understanding of how characters respond to problems, students had to list character traits to best describe a character's personality.  We read a story called The Art Project by Wonders and completed the following flow map.  

• Our essential question this week was How can we protect the Earth?  Students read about a woodcutter and his gift to the townspeople after a storm knocks down a huge mesquite tree in the middle of the main road.  

In Writing... 

• Students have begun a second opinion writing on 'What animal makes the best pet?'  Using a flow map to help organize their ideas, students came up with three reasons and supporting details on which pet makes the best pet for them.  

​In Math... 

• Students used grid paper to count unit squares to determine the area of various polygons.  Students learned that not all objects or polygons will have straight sides or fall nicely lined-up on the grid paper.  Therefore, they may have to combine halved unit squares with others that are halved to complete one unit.  Students practiced this by drawing their shoe on grid paper and counting the unit squares.
• Students were introduced to the customary unit of measure, the pound.  Using a balance, they compared one pound with other objects.  The children saw that equal masses do not necessary take up the same amount of space.  We made predictions whether various objects would be less than or more than a pound, then we used the balance to validate.   

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 Announcements:

• I hope all our Mothers had a wonderful Mother's day.  I hope you are enjoying your personalized notecard set.  I wanted to thank Chloe Glatt (Arius' Mom) for working so hard on assembling the cards and wrapping them.  They came out beautiful!  
• We will be having a pizza party on the last day of school which will be in lieu of school lunch on that day.  A flyer will be going home and other information is forthcoming.