Second Grade Rocks! 🌈

February is Black History Month. Throughout the year, but especially during this month, we celebrate Black achievement with stories, presentations, and discussions. Tar Beach is an allegorical tale full of symbolic and historical references central to African-American culture.  Award-winning author Faith Ringgold inspires us to take flight, like her protagonist Cassie Louise Lightfoot, to hope, dream, and use our imaginations to transcend above our world and achieve desired freedom. Second graders created urban scenes using paint chip samples as they envisioned themselves flying high above their favorite cities

 

What do you do when it rains? You read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs! Then, later, you unwind with some MindYeti activities. On this rain-soaked week, second graders enjoyed reading and discussing the cult classic story Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. We talked about story elements such as main characters, plot, setting, problem, solution, theme, and cause and effect. Students reviewed the characteristics of a tall tale and then cooked up some fabulous tall tales of their own!

 

On Thursday, the second grade watched the Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, deliver an incredibly moving recitation of her poem, “The Hill We Climb.” Ms. Gorman’s uplifting poem inspired some beautiful illustrations and reflections in the students’ writing journals.

 

It was thrilling to watch highlights of the Presidental Inauguration together in class in a special broadcast made just for kids! Students heard the National Anthem, “God Bless America,” and watched Biden and Harris being sworn in. Some of the students saluted on their own when they saw the American flag!

Second graders have been working with procedural texts (using words like first, then, next, and last) to reinforce the sequence of events. Last week, they wrote step-by-step instructions for making hot chocolate and then sipped their delicious treats.

The class served up some synonym rolls and then we all enjoyed sweet cinnamon rolls to celebrate our creative word work!

The class wrote personalized holiday cards to residents at Casa Dorinda. Each student learned about the interests of their friend and composed a sweet note that Ms. Svedlund delivered over the holidays! 🥰

Throughout the year, second graders enjoy extending their learning with art projects and activities. Using art as a medium for expression helps to reinforce concepts and allows students to uniquely display their creativity.

Watercolor silhouette paintings inspired by Native American legends.

 

Beautiful poinsettias inspired by The Legend of the Poinsettia written by this month’s featured author, Tomie DePaola.

 

Pointillism paintings in the style of Georges Seurat whom we studied while on our virtual travels through Europe.

 

Turkey gobble wobblers reinforce scientific observations about the details of turkey feathers.

 

Polkadot pumpkin paintings inspired by Yaoi Kusama.

 

Clay continent maps reinforce geography skills.

Allowing students opportunities to have a choice in their reading experience is key to motivating and engaging young readers. The second-grade class library is always open, and quiet reading is always an option for early finishers. Books are organized by reading level as well as by series. In our classroom, students frequently make recommendations to friends which encourages organic exploration of a variety of genres. New titles, based upon students’ interests, backgrounds, and requests, are added to the class library every month with fanfare. Students are welcome to keep books in their book boxes as long as they like as well as borrow books to bring home using the honor system. Due to safety protocols, completed books are placed in our “book bath” for cleaning before they can be returned to the shelves for others to enjoy. Currently, one of our favorite book baskets contains compilations that have been written and illustrated by students past and present.

From Lindsay Barrett at We are Teachers :

Powerful Things Happen When We Let Kids Choose What They Read

We all want to inspire our students to become lifelong readers, and incorporating choice into their reading lives is key for making this happen. Plenty of research supports student choice, so much that choosing what to read made it onto the International Literacy Association’s Children’s Rights to Read list earlier this year. Choice motivates students and supports engagement. Choice encourages kids to experience books as both mirrors and windows and gets them talking about their reading.