The remarkable readers in our classroom are using many fabulous strategies to help them comprehend their reading! One of these strategies is QUESTIONING. Good readers ask questions! Good readers ask DEEP questions before, during, and after reading text. “What will this book be about?” “Does that sentence make sense?” “Does this word sound right?” “What is the author’s purpose for writing this book?”

Good readers don’t just stop at ASKING the questions- they try and find the answers! “Can I infer this word’s meaning?” “Do I need to look in a dictionary?” “Is there another book that would have the answer to my question?” (Good readers don’t mind a little research to better their understanding)

The powerpoint for this week is a 20 questions gameshow- where YOU come up with the questions for each reading scenario! Remember- good readers ask many thin and thick questions!!

questioning-powerpoint-game.ppt

listen to our questioning song:

asking-questions.mp3

 

This week our second grade class will be learning about dental health. It is important for us to keep our teeth clean and healthy! The U.S. Surgeon General has come up with this list of seven steps to a bright, healthy smile!

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1.	Brush Teeth and gums with Fluoride Toothpaste at least twice a day, especially after eating breakfast and before bedtime.
2.	Visit the Dentist Regularly.
3.	Floss Your Teeth Daily.
4.	Use Fluoride Rinse for strong, healthy teeth and gums.
5.	Limit the number of times you eat snacks each day… and remember to practice healthy eating and get plenty of calcium.
6.	Wear a Mouthguard When Playing Sports.
7.	Ask your Dental Professional about Dental Sealants.

Here are a couple of fun websites to help us learn more about healthy teeth:

http://www.colgate.com/app/Kids-World/US/HomePage.cvsp

http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/stay_healthy/body/teeth.html

Second grade- go to our class wiki page on dental health to learn more about keeping those teeth fabulous! There is a link to an online video, powerpoint, parent information, and activities to download.

You might have noticed the online poll our class has had on our blog. We asked the question: What is your favorite genre? 29 people replied. According to our survey, the genre mystery had the most votes. With that information, we went to work creating different graphs to represent what we learned.

To start the activity, I divided the kids into 5 groups. I passed out all the materials needed to create the graphs as well as a printed copy of the poll results. Everybody was an important part of completing their group’s project. We made 5 different graphs and tables- bar graph, line graph, pie graph, pictograph, and a tally table. Not only was this a great cooperative learning activity, but it was tons of fun to use an online poll from our blog to help us understand the different types of graphs!

The powerpoint for this week is a FABULOUS teaching and review presentation on compound words and is brought to us from Kathy Isom. I like it a lot because it teaches a great strategy- if you can draw a picture of each word, then it is a great compound word!

compound-words-powerpoint.ppt

Here is a link to a fun interactive mini-movie on compound words. Watch the video, then help Gus round-up the compound words!

http://www.getreadytoread.org/games/game3/shell.html

Play a snowman compound word game:

http://www.sadlier-oxford.com/phonics/3_4/snowman3/snowman1.htm

Our classroom has implemented MANY different widgets throughout our classroom blog and wiki. You might be wondering- what exactly is a widget? A web widget (there are desktop widgets) is a few lines of code that can be installed and executed within a web page, blog, or wiki. Its a mini-application within your webpage. Widgets can do anything from giving you an up to date local weather forecast to playing videos from YouTube. Anybody can use a widget- in fact, the kids in our classroom have been using them for awhile now! I have compiled a list of what widgets your kid gets in our classroom!

Google Maps have been an extremely beneficial widget when teaching the continents. We really loved the ability to see the satellite images of earth. We had just finished learning about satellites in space having the ability to see the Great Wall of China… so it was AMAZING to actually show the kids the satellite images. As a class, we could chose a continent and then zoom in! We even zoomed in on West Haven!

Flickr Slide Show is a widget that allows you to show slideshows easily on webpages. Our class has used this widget to showcase some of our continent writing, but the possibilities range from class books to photo galleries.

Polls and Surveys can be done easily with widgets! Simply type in your question, type in your answer choices, and you are set! There is even the ability to select “other” as an answer choice, so the user can type in their response. You can put this widget on your blog’s sidebar or in the post directly. This form of data collection is not only informative, but fun! We have used PollDaddy, but there are other data widgets available.

Clustr Maps are one of our new favorite widgets. We can see that people from all over the world are reading our blog, and it has been especially fun since we have learned about the continents. We almost have a red dot on every continent!!

Timelines can be fabulous when you want to show data in a chronological fashion. There are two different widgets that I have seen that can create a timeline. The first widget gives you the ability to create your own timeline by adding your own information. This would be perfect for creating a class timeline of someone’s life or current events. The second widget I have seen creates a timeline of syndicated data. We have used this type of timeline on our “news for kids” wiki page. This widget shows you feeds from Weekly Reader and Science News for Kids chronologically, in a calendar- like manner. Either timeline works beautifully in the classroom!

Teacher Tube widgets are great to embed streaming, educational video into your post or webpage. We have used this widget on our class wiki a couple times when I have found a great video that pertains to a specific topic- such as nutrition (this video is from the 50’s and is hilarious) and Australia.

RSS Feed Reader is a wonderful widget when you want to show syndicated information on your webpage. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Syndicated information includes podcasts, blogs, and news headlines. We have an RSS feed reader on our wiki that shows our classroom’s latest blog posts. You can subscribe to a feed by clicking on RSS on a webpage or copying and pasting the webpage’s link in your feed reader. There are also widgets specifically designed just for a blog’s RSS feed called “blidgets” that do the same thing with a little extra eye candy.

We are learning about the basics of good, healthy eating and the new food pyramid this month. Proper nutrition is an important part of keeping us happy and healthy. When we eat right, we feel better! A fabulous tool in helping us make good choices with what we eat is the food pyramid. There are 5 main categories of the food pyramid- grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, and meat/beans. These foods help us in different ways and that is why it is important that we eat a well-balanced diet. It is important that we eat smart so we can live a happier life. Plus, if you eat right, you will do better at school! That is incredible!

Listen to the 5-a-day.mp3!

Students, check out our class collaborative wiki page on nutrition to share your knowledge! There is also a link to a nutrition game that is a lot of fun!!

We are studying about data collecting and graphing this week in math. We can collect data and make simple graphs on ANY subject… just think of a question, ask that question to others (this is called a survey), and then put that information, or data, in an easy to read form. There are all sorts of ways to represent your data- bar graphs, line graphs, pictographs, pie graphs, and Venn diagrams.

Our powerpoint this week comes from Monica Yuskaitis and helps us to understand more about graphing basics. graphs.ppt

Follow these links to play a variety of data collection/graphing games:

http://www.gamequarium.com/data.html

http://classroom.jc-schools.net/basic/math-graph.html

Blogging has become an important part of learning with technology in Room 203. There are many great reasons on how blogs can enhance our learning and parent communication. Blogs allow us to share information easily with parents about what is going on in our busy classrooms. As teachers, blogging can allow our students to answer content study questions or give feed back on thought provoking posts. There are so many other reasons to blog, that we made the following video top ten list of detailed explanations on why blogging can be beneficial to any classroom. But don’t just take our word for it- get started blogging right away and embark on the adventure to the blogosphere with excitement and ease.

blog.mov

This week the second grade will be celebrating their learning of the seven continents during an amazing event known as the FESTIVAL OF THE CONTINENTS. Second graders in Utah are required to be familiar with and locate the 7 continents on a map or globe. We work really hard in our classroom to learn a little bit about each of these unique and interesting continents. Our classes have read books and poetry, viewed presentations through websites and powerpoints, and now we are ready to have some HANDS-ON fun!! Parents collaborate to provide us with educational and enriching stations about each of the continents- there is even a food and music station where we can eat foods and learn songs from around the world. Students will start the day with a travel passport- where they will get stamps as they complete each station. It’s a trip around the world in one day!!

Room 203- go on over to our class wiki page and share your learning about the continents!