Wonderland in 1st Grade

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Can you Guess My Rule?

In Math we started a new unit called Does it Walk, Crawl, or Swim? We played a game called Guess My Rule. Guess My Rule is a classification game in which the students try to figure out the common characteristic, or attribute, of a set of objects. To play the game, the rule maker(Mrs. Lankford, and students) decides on a mystery rule for classifying a particular group of things.
The rule maker starts the game by giving some examples of people who fit the rule, for example, by having two students who are wearing blue stand up. The guessers then try to find other individuals who fit the rule. With each guess, the student named is added to one group or the other~ does fit or does not fit the rule. Both groups must be clearly visible to the guessers so they can make use of all the evidence~what does and does not fit~as they try to figure out what the rule is. We all had a great time learning!

After playing the game we discussed how we might use the interlocking cubes to build a model that would represent our data. It was a great visual for the students to see.

Mathematicians have different ways of showing the information they collect so they can see it clearly and share it with other people. Sometimes they make pictures or graphs, and sometimes they build models. We call these representations of the data. This is exactly what the students did. Awesome!
This week we will play Guess My Rule with Yektti cards and learn about Venn Diagrams.

In Science we will start our new unit on The Weather. In this unit we will observe and do activities that will expand our awareness of the weather, its features, and its effects on our daily lives.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

The end of our 1st nine weeks!

Last week started with reviewing all the concepts that was taught for the past 9 weeks. We explored the 100's chart, we discussed the patterns that we see on the 100's chart. We skip counted by 5's and 10's. We solved number strings, story problems addition and subtraction. We worked on combinations of tens, doubles, and coin combinations.
We ended the week with our end of the unit test. It's a great feeling when you see that the students understand what you are teaching! Way to go students! Keep up the great work!

Our class will begin a new unit called Does it Walk, Crawl, or Swim? In this unit, your child will collect data and learn about sorting and classifying the data.

Thank you to all for your support and participation in our 2nd grade Math night. We hope that the information/strategies discussed were helpful.

Monday, October 15, 2007

The World we live in! It's a great place!

In honor of Blog Action Day with the topic being our "Environment". At this time we are discussing the Earth in Science.
Today our topic was on keeping Our World Clean.
Some of the things the students can do: is pick up trash on the playground, helping your neighbors, we should plant plants to help make nature look beautiful, stop littering the St. John's river, don't smoke, help people stop hurting other people, stop taking animals habitats and stop using their fur as coats. Please stop cutting down trees.
All these thoughts are from the minds of 2nd graders from Mrs. Lankford's class.
What is your thought?

Sunday, October 14, 2007

" We all have a story to tell"

Wow! what a week! The students solved a variety of story problems involving combining (addition) and separating (subtraction) using their own strategies. Their job was to read the story and visualize what was happening in the problem before trying to solve it.

The students are learning that Mathematicians are organized! and our 2nd grade Mathematicians are getting organized as well. After reading the story problems the first thing they are required to do is write an equation/number sentence to go with what they think the story is about. This is a great way to start because how can you solve a problem if you don't have an equation. The students must record their solution so that someone else can understand their strategies. They have a bank of strategies starting with counting up by ones, and tens. Using tally marks, drawing pictures, decomposing, or using the open number line.

The students were allowed to create their own story problems about things they might see outside their window. One student wrote about a 100 dollar bill outside his window. Maybe Mrs. Lankford should make home visits to his house. :)
The students made very good progress with their story problems.

In Calendar Math we are spending time learning about telling time. We will continue discussing graphs, rows, columns, and arrays.
We are looking for patterns on the calendar. Our discussion was about rotation and congruence.

We are also discussing rotation in Science.
How about those Terrariums! Most of the students brought their Terrarium home on Friday. It was so awesome to watch them put their cricket in their Terrarium. One student actually named her cricket Wanda. I took some awesome pictures! Hopefully soon I will be able to post them on my site!
All in all it was another great week in Mrs. Lankford's cottage.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Shop and Save

Today was a day filled with lots of rain and lots of learning going on in Mrs. Lankford's cottage.

Our Class went shopping with coupons. The students had to find combinations of coupons that total a given amount.

They also had to find three coupons for things you might need to buy if you were having a party. I think they were disappointed to find out that I didn't have coupons for a birthday cake :) they had to stretch their imagination with the coupons for brownies. It was so much fun to see them getting excited about coupons.
I ask the students to check out Sunday's paper to see coupons in color. Several students said that they didn't get the paper. No problem neither do I . So parents if you receive anything with coupons in the mail please be sure to show your student :)

In our Everyday Counts Calendar Math, I introduced a new element, we are discussing telling time. We also collected and recorded data about our favorite Resource Class on a graph. PE was the big winner with my afternoon class!

Today was our 31st day of school.