Second Week in Second Grade

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This week we started putting our senses to the test as we did a number of games and activities that focused on our first line of inquiry, “How we use our 5 senses?”

During the unit time, the students were divided into 3 groups and had the chance to play 3 different games which focused on their senses of touch and sight. Some of the game activities were trying to match textured tiles with only their sense of touch, or to choose the object that had the same texture or shape as another. When it came to their sense of sight, sometimes they had to put a small puzzle together while blindfolded, or to put tangram tiles together to match a picture faster than the time it took their teammates to roll the same picture on the dice 3 times. Whichever game they played, they seemed to have a good time!

During PE, we continued to work on cooperative games. We actually played the same three games that we played last week - Over, Under Caterpillar, Loggers and Cross the River (except we changed the name to - The Floor is Lava!) and made them a bit more challenging by taking away some of the students’ senses! We used blindfolds to take away their eyesight, sound proof headphones to make it difficult to hear, and some big cooking mitts and gloves to limit their sense of touch to make it difficult to hold things. The goal of the games was not to win by being the first, but to be the team that could cooperate and communicate best and complete the tasks safely.

In discovering our 5 senses we also looked at the different words, or adjectives that we use to describe how something looks, feels, smells, sounds and tastes. We played a game called Baamboozle, that gives teams rewards for correctly answering question, but could also randomly penalize a team if they picked an unlucky number. All of the questions had to do with completing sentences about the 5 senses and it was fun. Because the game could randomly make one team swap points with another team, or jump into first place, I had the students agree that no one needs to feel bad or upset if they lost the game and they did really well with no one getting upset. They liked is so much that they asked to play again! (Maybe another day!)

In math, we moved on from the properties of 2D shapes to 3D shapes. The students were given various 3D shapes and asked to sort themselves into groups, based on something they could observe that was similar about their shapes. The groups then explained how they sorted themselves. 

One group was cylinders, because they had circles on top and borrow and a side that was curved, not flat. 

The second group had all sides that were squares or rectangles so they figured that they belonged together. 

A third group had shapes that had sides that all met at a point “like a pyramid”, said Kana. 

And the last group decided that they didn’t fit into the other categories so they made their own group.

This left just one student without a group. Her shape looked a bit like a pyramid, but although it had a couple triangular sides, they didn’t all join together like on a pyramid…so we had to look a bit closer at the other groups and noticed that there were shapes that had rectangular sides that connected to shapes like pentagons and hexagons, not just at one end but on two opposite sides. So our mystery shape finally found its group - the prisms. 

During language, in preparation for some of the research that we’ll be doing about our sensory organs we investigated the differences between fiction and non-fiction texts by comparing and contrasting some of the non-fiction books, and story books in our classroom library in order to identify the features of non-fiction texts.

First Full Week in Second Grade

Our first full week of being back in class and it was a little bit extra long as we had our Parent’s Night in person for the first time since Covid began. It was great seeing all those who could make it in person! For those who did not attend, or if you would like to review some of the information that was shared, please see the attached Parent Night PDF file here. You can also find a link to it in the Website Links tab above.

Thank you to Maria and Jacy’s mothers for volunteering to be our PTA class representatives for Grade 2 this year!

This week we began our first unit of inquiry, under the transdisciplinary theme, “Who We Are.” The central idea for the unit is, “Our senses help us to learn about and interpret the world around us.” This week we started by finding out what we already know about the first line of inquiry, “how we use our 5 senses.”

We began by watching a short video taken from a baby’s point of view as they discover the world around them. We then reviewed and discussed the different ways the baby explored and discovered things in the world.

The students identified the 5 senses and sense organs that we use. We also did a senses scavenger hunt where the students had to use 4 of their senses to find things around the classroom (they didn’t use their sense of taste because it wouldn’t be such a good idea to taste things around the room!). They used their eyes to find something purple or something square. They used their sense of smell to find something that smelled sweet, as well as something stinky. They used their sense of hearing to help them  find something that rattles, and finally they used their sense of touch to find something fluffy and something rough.

Students received their unit notebooks and created a title page for the unit.

We also worked together to decide on classroom helper roles for class and the students helped by creating job titles and their name cards to be put into a job wheel that we can rotate each week.

The students also logged into their Seesaw accounts for the first time and practiced using the different functions to create a page about them. The used the camera to add a photo, text boxes to type 5 adjectives to describe themselves and the microphone to record their explanation of why they chose those 5 words. 

In PE, we reviewed playground safety and the importance of sportsmanship when winning and losing games. Our focus for the first weeks in PE will be playing cooperative games and using (or simulating a loss of our senses). Some of the games we played this week were, Cross the River, Loggers, and Over Under Caterpillar.

In Cross the River, the students worked in teams of 4 or 5 with a set of objects (skipping rope, stepping stones, scooter board, etc.) that they had use to get their whole team across the playground without touching the blue. Teams used social skills (cooperation) and communication skills to discuss and plan how they would use the different things to help get across. 

For the game Loggers, students worked in teams of 3 to move a log down the river. One logger had to jump over the log as their two teammates carried it over them each time until they reached the other side and then the players switched roles. The race was over once all 3 members had finished their turn at jumping across the river.

Then in Over-Under Caterpillar, teams of 4 or 5 students worked together to pass a ball over their heads or under their legs to the person behind them with the last person in line having to bring the ball back to the front of the line to start the process over again and to bring the team’s caterpillar one step closer to the goal on the other side of the playground.