First Full Week in Second Grade

 Our first full week in second grade was full of finding out what the weekly schedule was like as we experienced our first PE lessons and all of the other specialist classes. We also began our inquiry into our first unit of the year under the trans disciplinary theme - How We Organize Ourselves. This unit will be all about technology. Our central idea is: Technology influences how people work together and connect with each other. 

To begin the unit, each table group was given riddles or hints to find an item within the room. The first hint was always very vague, and the second gave a bit more detail, while the third could help them identify the object quite easily. The goal was to be the first team to guess their item correctly since each table had a different item to find. Once they discovered the five items—an electric pencil sharpener, a dictionary, a calculator, a paintbrush, and a fan—we then examined the connections they had to discover the theme of this unit. Some of the similarities that the students noticed were that they were things we use in the classroom, they are all man-made, and that more than half of them were electric. We then unscrambled the central idea and lines of inquiry, and looked up the meanings of some unfamiliar words to help us understand. 

The students also wrote down some of their questions for our Wonder Wall. 

Working in their table groups, they brainstormed the different types of technology they use on a daily basis at home,  school or even in between!

In PE, our first unit is focusing on cooperatives games and for at least one of the games the students physically connected with each other as they had to try to untangle themselves from a giant human knot! In another, they had to pass a hula hoop around the circle without letting go of each other’s hands, and in other they passed a ball over and under the long caterpillar’s body then crawl to the front of the linc to make the caterpillar move forward. They also hopped across the pond using hula hoops as lily pads and skipped over sticks carried by “loggers” in the logger race. 

Finally, in going along with the technology theme, during our ICT lesson time the students logged into their computer to practice some typing skills.