News for June 1, 2018

News for June 1, 2018

This week the children began to write comics/graphic novel stories, learned about basic multiplication and made butterflies out of reused Sun Chip bags.

Writing

The children wrote letters to the company Frito Lay (the makers of Sun Chips) to try to convince them to make the Sun Chips bags either compostable or recyclable. Currently, the bags are made out of metal and plastic fused together and must be put in the garbage. We are hoping to get a response from the company before the end of school.

The class looked at another way to tell a story, through comics and graphic novels. The students  looked at how these illustrated stories are told using pictures with “speech” bubbles and narrative comments. The children are now writing their own comics.

Math 

The children continued to apply their math skills to study the Sun Chip bags they collected from pizza lunch last week. After cutting open the bags the children re-measured the length, width and perimeter of the new bag shape. They also solved word problems using the bag information (e.g., If there are two dozen Sun Chip bags in a box, how many bags are in the box?).

Later in the week, the class was introduced to the basics of multiplication. At the grade 2 level, the children are exposed to the idea of multiplication as a faster way to add equal groups. The students linked addition to multiplication by connecting, for example, 2+2+2+2=8 as “four groups of two equal eight” or 4x2=8. The basic understanding at this age is that multiplication is repeated addition.

Science

Now that we’ve released our butterflies, the class has time to return to our unit on simple machines. (Recall that we have already studied levers and inclined planes.) This week we looked at wedges. Wedges are simple machines with one narrow edge and a wider edge on the opposite side. Wedges may look like inclined planes but wedges need an applied force to work. The children looked at examples of wedges (e.g. a doorstop) and used the wedges on a pair of scissors (blades) to cut plasticine. The class also learned that a wedge needs to be made out of strong material or it will collapse and not work.

Art

The students talked to their friends about their canvas paintings that were inspired by the paintings of Dayal Kaur Khalsa. Then the children were videotaped as each one spoke to the whole class about his/her art, which book inspired them and reflected on what they did best when creating the paintings.

The children experimented with ways to reuse the Sun Chip bags to create art. It was difficult! First the bags had to be washed and dried. The material used to make the bags does not fold well, it ripped easily and it was impossible to glue it. They discovered that the best way to reuse it for art was to create butterfly shapes held in place by pipe cleaners. Each student made at least two of these, one to take home and one to send to Frito Lay with our letters to the company.

Oral Communication

The class continued to rehearse the class play in two groups. The groups worked on becoming more fluent when reading their lines and remembering when it’s time for his/her character to speak. This is the longest play that we’ve done so far this year (about 20 minutes).

Extra

The children participated in our school’s annual tradition of a Jump Rope for Heart fundraising event on Friday morning. Thank you to the families for your donations to this worthy cause.

The children had a chance on Friday to reuse the cardboard boxes and tubes that I have been saving all school year. This helps them be creative and helps me as I s-l-o-w-l-y begin to organize my classroom to move everything to Vaughn Academy at the end of June, At this point in the year, it is wonderful to see what the students are able to create independently and how they share and build on ideas of their friends. We will be doing this every Friday until the end of school. Next week, the children will write stories about what they made.

Books read aloud this week:

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (chapter book)

Pippi Moves In  by Astrid Lindgren (comic version of the novel)

Get to Know Wedges by Jennifer Christiansen