Writing, Centers, and Our First Project!

It's been a fantastic August; I can hardly believe we've been in school a whole month already! The transition to second grade and a new school building has been an adventure but I think we're all finally settled. Here are a few of our fantastic ELA centers in action:

We got our classroom iPads and learned how to take care of them while exploring our new apps! 

We also started visual art class with the amazing Ms. Bradford!

We read our first nonfiction unit story of the year, "Exploring Space," learned about main idea and details, and tried our hands at expository informative writing. These kids amaze me everyday!

For this story we also incorporated some visual art experiences by creating sentences and murals to define our amazing words for the week. Each group of students had two words to incorporate into a sentence and picture. Here are some of the collaborating groups in action: 

We also had our first drama/theater class. The director, Ms. Fleischman, focused on projection and expression while reinforcing the importance of listening to directions through Shel Silverstein poems. Can't you just see the emotion expressed with each child's face and body language? 

Our first class project was a "Me Project" in which the students designed a mini-me and presented it to the class. Students were to focus on what made them unique. The listening audience was to compare and contrast what similar interests they shared with the presenting students.

Download project instructions HERE. 

We've had a blast so far and can't wait to share more of our learning!

 

Plickers and Design!

Looking for a new quick formative assessment option? Have you heard of Plickers? I was at the SAIL 2015  conference in Florence, AL in July when I first heard of these fun tools. Plickers are a free printable set of numbered symbols. Each student gets a unique Plicker number. If you look closely, you can see the letters A, B, C, and D at the top of each side of the design.

Click on the Picture for More Info

Teachers download the Plicker app from iTunes or GooglePlay and load questions with A-D answer choices. When the teacher asks a question, students decide on an answer and hold up their choices. The picture above shows C as the chosen answer. The unique symbols keep student answers cryptic and private. Once all students hold up their answers, teachers use the app on their phone or iPad to scan the room and record the results. The results are shown on a graph for immediate feedback and stored under the student names for teacher review. Get your own Plicker set here.

 Here is where fun started! We were first led to create a design on a paper square. 

Can you tell what it is yet?

Do you see my name (Aimee)? We folded our squares in half three different ways, three times, one time then open, another fold and open, then a final fold and open. Our square papers now had three fold lines through the middle. We folded our papers into a small triangle and wrote our names in block or bubble letters then folded and rubbed the back until it transferred a mirror image onto the clean side. We continued this tracing and rubbing transfer process until our paper was completely covered in our name designs. Then we were able to color our designs, add a border, and tape it to the back of our assigned Plicker symbols.  

Now we had beautifully unique designs to add flare to our Plicker squares!

On the last conference day, we put all the Plicker square designs together and made a quilt pattern. Look at all of the one-of-a-kind squares!

This would be such a neat idea to make as a class. Other ideas: I could see the design lesson being incorporated in teaching geometry, symmetry, or you could even choose a vocabulary or key word to build your design.