We continued our biography research last week. The second graders have been busy reading and taking notes for our upcoming Living Statue Gallery (April 26, 1:15-1:45). They are currently working on writing down important facts about the person they have chosen to study. They're answering questions, for example, when/where was this person born? What did this person like to do when he/she was a child? Next week we'll focus on determining the precursors that lead to the person's fame and central themes in our biographies. We will also make posters and time lines as a way to show/organize our understanding.
Not only have the second graders been reading their own biographies, they have also been listening to class read alouds and contributing to class discussions about various influential people. We read about Duke Ellington, Henri Matisse, Marie Curie, and Michael Jordan. Duke Ellington told stories through his music about African American history, from slavery to the civil rights struggle. After we read about Duke Ellington, the second graders listened to some of Duke's music. While they listened, they drew the music as they imagined it in their minds. We made a class book and these drawings are currently in our classroom library. We learned that as Henri Matisse grew older, he created artwork by "drawing with scissors." He made cutout paper collages. The second graders then made their own collages and tried to tell a story with their art. It has been fun to learn more about these diverse, influential, and inspiring individuals.
We did work with homophones last week. A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning, and possibly spelling. For example, week and weak are homophones. We focused on this because three of our word work words last week were homophones: to, two, and too. The students practiced spelling, writing sentences, and drawing pictures of different homophones.
We continued our study of multiplication last week by exploring equal groups. We wrote and solved equal group number stories. We also jumped into geometry which will continue this week. We will expand upon the attached list by exploring polygons, symmetry, and three dimensional shapes.