Saturday, November 15, 2014

Are you ready for the Flipped Classroom?

Parents, please check out the video I created to introduce you to the flipped classroom. More information is to come next week. It is an amazing opportunity for our 2nd graders!


Another video, made by someone else,  to further explain...

Educreations: How To

Students, please watch this video on how to create an Edcreations presentation on the iPad. We will use this app in class this week. It is a free app, if you're interested in downloading it on to an apple device.



You can also create presentations by going to: https://www.educreations.com/login/. I have already set up your accounts using your normal username and passwords from school

Enjoy creating!

Saturday, November 1, 2014

"Spooking" out drugs!




Spooky Writing!

During the last week, we've been learning about adjectives. We even got to eat popcorn and then describe the popcorn using our 5 senses!

On Halloween, our task was to create a spooky story using adjectives. First we created word references to describe spooky nouns and adjectives to describe the nouns. Finally, we created our spooky stories and illustrated using chalk.







Chris Van Allsburg Vocabulary

We worked with a partner to define vocabulary using a dictionary, draw an illustration, made up our own sentence using the word, and created a movement to help our whole class remember the word! We even used the movements when we heard the word read aloud during The Garden of Abdul Gasazi.

What have you noticed about the type of vocabulary Chris Van Allsburg uses throughout all of his books?

2-Digit Addition & Subtraction using Socrative

We used an app called, Socrative, to show our understanding of 2-digit addition and subtraction using a variety of strategies including mental math and a hundreds chart. What did you think about Socrative?



Mrs. Patten likes Socrative because it gives her instant feedback on how we're doing!





Heritage Farmstead Field Trip

Group 1 & 2
On Tuesday, we had our first field trip to Heritage Farmstead in Plano. We had a lot of fun and learned about what life was like in the 19th and 20th century Blackland Prairie (similar to what life was like in Sarah, Plain and Tall). 
Learning about artifacts from the 19th and 20th century. 



Feeding the chickens.


Learning how to wash cloths by hand.

We learned how to milk a cow.

We learned about blacksmiths. 

Reflecting on Our Writing

This week we went over the rubric Mrs. Patten will be using to assess our stories. After discussing each part of the rubric, we graded our own writing and then Mrs. Patten graded our writing using the rubric. After looking at our writing again, we came up with our own goals to improve our writing. We had a "snowball fight" to share what we planned to improve: idea, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, voice, conventions, and handwriting. After the "snowball fight" we created a tally chart to see what areas our class needs the most improvement in writing.