There are so many ways to say and show one hundred! Second graders celebrated the 100th day of school by working with 100-themed activities. Classes worked in whole group, small group, partnerships and independently to demonstrate their understanding of 100. A few of the math concepts and skills that the 100th day activities help to reinforce are: place value concepts; skip-counting; measuring;calculating elapsed time; counting patterns; estimating and addition. Students had opportunities to create sculptures using 100 Legos, engaged in kinesthetic activities for 100 second intervals, and challenged their word building skills with word building activities. We can't believe that we are 100 days smarter and 100 days closer with our friends at MKA!
2S hit the Brookside stage this Friday as they performed their class play, One Zillion Valentines. With a message about love and friendship on Valentine's Day, 2S's play celebrated treating everyone with respect and working hard to make everyone feel a bit more loved on a day of love. The play had many songs with meaningful lyrics and a theme that ran throughout the play and was a line from the song Nothing More, "We are how we treat each other and nothing more." What a powerful message this was for 2S to share with the Brookside audience.
Students collaborated throughout the entire play process, from brainstorming ideas for what they'd like their play to be, to designing the scenery, posters, and programs. For the past two weeks, 2S students were very busy learning lines, cues, song lyrics, and dances to bring their play to life, as well as learning acting skills that helped them convey their message to the audience. 2S's show wrapped up the second grade play season and we are so proud of all the second grade stars! Second Grade writers are preparing for publishing our Realistic Fiction stories. We have learned that these stories have real settings, and characters with real problems and solutions. These characters are similar, but different from ourselves in many ways. It was exciting to imagine traits of our characters by thinking about who they are on the outside, then start to think about what makes them interesting and special. We considered where they live, their hobbies and personality, and who the people are that surround them. When planning our stories, we have considered real problems that our characters may find themselves in, then considered how they might work to solve the problem themselves. As we write our first draft, we are trying to include different ingredients such as strong beginnings, making the characters speak, making a movie in our minds, and including our characters' emotions. We will follow the writing process and edit our work before we use the Book Creator app on the iPads to create a virtual book of our stories. Stay tuned for the many exciting stories coming from our classrooms in the coming weeks!
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