Monday marked our 100th day of 2nd Grade! We celebrated this exciting day with the other 2nd grade students and Ms. Larsen's first grade class. We had so much fun playing games, making snacks, and doing arts and crafts that all revolved around the number 100. Here are some pictures from our day.
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At the end of the day on Friday, I told the kids that this was one of the most inspiring weeks of teaching I have ever experienced. I was inspired by their excitement and passion to help other children. Our students not only wanted to help the preschoolers learn how to read, but also to love reading. They took charge of planning our fieldwork, and worked really hard once at the preschool to engage their preschool buddies in an exciting learning activity.
The preschool fieldwork was our big event this week, but we also delved into a couple of new concepts! Keep reading to learn more about our week! Here are some highlights from our week How can 2nd Graders affect literacy in our neighborhood? We started our week with this question, because we found that there are many book deserts in North County. The students came up with wonderful ideas of how we can help our community, including hosting a book drive, writing our ow books to share, and making a "book box" to put outside of our school where people can borrow books. I told the students about a local preschool that could use our help, and the students jumped at the opportunity! They immediately started brainstorming ways we could bring books to the preschool. This conversation led us into planning our trip to the preschool. Fieldwork We visited the NCCS Oakhill Preschool, which is where we will build the library. Click here to learn more about the preschool. We had two purposes for this trip: 1. Get to know the children who we are making the library for. 2. Build a relationship with the preschoolers and engage them in a positive learning experience I was planning on having an activity for the kids to do with the preschoolers, but our students beat me to it! They started brainstorming a variety of different activities they thought the preschoolers would be interested in trying. Before I knew it, students were writing lesson plans in their journals and collecting materials in our classroom that they would need for their activities. Each student ended up making a bag of activities to bring with them to the preschool. I was impressed with how many students got into the perspective of a 4 year old, and realized that some of their favorite classroom activities and books may not be appropriate for a younger child who is just learning how to read. It only got better from there! We went to the preschool, and our students took their jobs and purpose for the fieldwork very seriously. I saw many students reading books with their buddies, making posters, teaching them fun card games, and doing arts and crafts. Our students were excellent role models and showed the preschoolers how fun learning can be. The preschoolers really looked up to the 2nd graders and had so much fun. They were so sad when it was time for us to leave, and kept asking when we would come back. Make sure to check out the pictures below to see our wonderful students in action! Free Little Library Back at school, we reflected on our time at the preschool. I asked students to think about the physical space and what they noticed about the preschooler's access to books. Our 2nd graders noticed that there weren't a lot of books in the classroom, and they didn't have a clear space in their classroom for books, like how we have our classroom library. We went back to one of our student's ideas about building a "book box" - while building and filling a whole library on the preschool campus would be difficult, we could make a mini library! Students spent the rest of the week conducting research and brainstorming ideas for a mini library by using this research document about The Little Free Library Organization. While we will not be making an official Free Little Library, the concept provided us with lots of great inspiration for our work! We also share the same mission: "To promote literacy and the love of reading by building free book exchanges worldwide and to build a sense of community as we share skills, creativity and wisdom across generations." - Little Free Library Based on their research, students made a first draft of the mini library. We had so many wonderful ideas, including a library shaped like a rocket ship, and an ice cream truck! Next week we will use these drafts as the foundation to draw real blueprints of our little library. Math - Exploring Shapes Shapes are an important foundational concept for drawing blueprints. So, this week we moved from measurement to learning about shapes. Since we are making our blueprints on paper, we focused on 2-Dimensional shapes. 2D shapes have two important dimensions: Faces and vertices. Students explored 2D shapes through pattern blocks, whole group conversations, this brainpop jr. video, and a fun new game! Fitness Friday! As a school, we are working on our Fitness on Fridays! Throughout the day, we will complete a variety of fitness challenges and play games outside. This Friday we did 50 jumping jacks, had a pushup challenge, tested our flexibility doing the splits, somersaulted across the turf, and did 3 GoNoodle videos. Word Work We have started our Daily word work routine! This week we all used the same practice words to get an understanding for daily routine. Once we have learned the routine, students will receive a new word list each word that targets a specific spelling pattern or letter sound that they are currently working on. Here are some pictures from our week We have some of the smartest, most caring kids in the world in this class! I have been so impressed with their ability to make meaningful connections to our learning, ask and answer thoughtful questions, and empathize with others. On many occasions this week I found myself saying, "That's a really good questions, what do you all think?" This week we focused on how people access books around the world and within our local community. We added pins to our Local and World maps as we explored new places. We also went on our first fieldwork of the new year, it was wonderful! Read on to learn more about our week. Here are some highlights from our week: Where are the libraries in North County? We spent time looking at access to books within our community in San Diego. We mapped out all of the North County Libraries on a class map. Students also labeled the libraries on personal maps. Our observations about the library locations led us into learning about a new concept: Book Deserts. Can you guess what a book desert it? It's a place that does not have a lot of access to books. We quickly located a couple places on the map that look like book deserts - there wasn't a local library within walking distance. Our insightful students continued to run with this idea of a book desert. They noticed that even if you have a library close by, that does not mean that you can get there. They pointed out that kids can't get to a library without an older sibling or adult. Other students pointed out that even if people live in an area with a lot of other resources, that does not mean that there is easy access to free books as well. Fieldwork Went to to the San Marcos Branch Library! One of the librarians, Ms. Sandy, taught us so much about the library. She told us about how libraries provide lots of people with so much access to books because the books are free, and anyone can get a library card. She also taught us about how to look for books in the library. We got a great tour too! Ms. Sandy walked us around the different areas of the library. I think a favorite for all of us was the behind-the-scenes look at the sorting machine! You feed a bin into the machine, and it decides which bin it should go into to get re-stocked on the shelves. After the fieldwork, we came back and shared the notes we took from the library. Then, we wrote a reflection about what makes a good library. Characteristics of a Good Library After our fieldwork, watching videos about how people access books, and reading about several traveling libraries in My Librarian is a Camel, the students started a running list of characteristics of a good library. Here are what students have observed so far:
Somebody..in..wanted..but..so
We are working on summarizing and identifying the key facts in a story. We are calling it, the gist - What's the gist of the story? We are using this format to help us identify the key parts. (Adapted from Engage New York's curriculum). At home, this is a great way to engage in a meaningful follow up conversation after reading a book with your child! Math This week we learned about a new unit of measurement - Meters. We practiced measuring objects around the classroom using meter sticks, and deciding when we should measure an object using centimeters vs. meters. We also worked on a variety of concepts that build number sense and fluency with adding and subtracting numbers within 100. Here are some pictures from our week: Our focus this week was on launching our new project, "Big World, Little Library." In this project we will learn about literacy and the importance of access to books. We will support access to literature in our community by creating a little library! I know this class of avid readers will enjoy sharing their love of books with others, and I am so excited to get this project started! Please visit our project website page to learn more details about our project. Here are some highlights from our week Project Launch We launched our project with quite a controversial activity. To start talking about this topic, we wanted the 2nd graders to understand what the word “access” means, and how it would feel to not have resources readily available to support our learning. So, students had to experience what it would feel like to go to school without any resources. To create this experience, the class was split into two groups. The students engaged in two of our regular daily activities: solving math word problems, and then reading independently. However, there was a twist! For each activity, one of the groups was lacking resources. In the first math activity, the blue group had to share old pencils without erasers, and couldn’t use any of our supporting math materials. When it was time to read, the red group had to pick from a bin of old, tattered books and magazines. I didn’t tell students exactly why there was a difference between the two groups, I just asked them to notice the differences and recognize how they were feeling. Many students verbalized that they felt frustrated and sad, and that it just seemed so unfair. After the activities we debriefed. We did a chalk talk answering the following questions: 1. How did it feel to not have the materials you needed? 2. How did it feel to see other kids not have the materials they needed? 3. How did it affect your learning? Students had some really powerful responses to these questions. Many students said they weren’t interested in their work, it made the activities boring, and they weren’t able to build their skills. "When I didn't have books I wanted to read, it made it feel like reading wasn't important." Casey then lead the class into a really nice discussion about our access at school. She pointed out that we are very lucky to have everything we need at school, but some kids don't have the same experience. The students spontaneously started thinking about ways that they could help other kids :) Data Collection After our project launch activity, we started to think about the materials that we use the most, or are most valuable to our learning. Students made a list of all the materials they could think of. We made a data collection sheet and the students walked through the school and observed classrooms. Looking into each classroom, they made a tally mark for every time they saw a material on our list being used. We came back into the classroom and shared our data. We saw that furniture (tables, chairs, carpets) seemed to be really important and useful in every class. Closely following this was books, pencils, journals, and computers.
Reflections
Our project launch and surrounding conversations lead to these two reflections this week: 1. What could you do to help other children that don't have books? 2. Why are books important? What happens if people don’t have books? We continued to use our On Target reflection checklist so that students continued to assess and monitor their own work. For both of the questions, there were some really great responses! See pictures below of the students' reflections. Yoga I am so happy to say that we had lots of movement and breathing strategies incorporated into our week thanks to yoga! The students went to their yoga class on Thursday with the Sean O'shea foundation, and then I also led them through some yoga practices in the classroom. We learned the five finger breathing strategy, the yoga wave game, and partner yoga poses. Be sure to check out the pictures of our "Down Dog Train" below! Math This week we continued to focus on measuring using centimeters. However, this week instead of using many cubes to measure, we just used one! We practiced the "measure, mark, and move" technique using centimeter cubes. This skill comes in handy when you start to measure materials that are longer than just one ruler, yard stick, or measuring tape, and you have to mark where you should continue measuring again. We used this strategy to measure items in the classroom, and to make our own centimeter rulers. We also continued to solve addition and subtraction word problems related to measurement, and built our automaticity with base ten facts. Living word wall We started a word wall to help us with our spelling and vocabulary. We call it a "living" word wall because it will continue to grow and change throughout our project as students learn new words and master existing words. The word wall is entirely created by students! As students engage in writing activities, we look to see if there are any common words that students are wondering how to spell. If they can't be found in their spelling dictionaries or somewhere else around the room, a student will add it to the wall. Word Study Starting January 25th, we will have word work every afternoon during our literacy time. Students will focus on a spelling feature each week (ex: short vowels, long vowels, inflected endings, etc.). I believe that word work will support students in creating the high-quality writing that we will do for this next project! Here are some pictures from our week! We had such a positive, productive, and rainy first week back to school! The students came back to school excited, refreshed and ready to learn. They were so happy to see one another, it was a great way to kick off the new year :) This week we focused on building some of the foundational skills and understandings that students will need as we move into our next project (which we will launch next week!). We are exploring new math concepts, investigating maps, and learning how to craft high-quality writing. Here are some highlights from our week: Reflection writing The students came back from break so eager to tell us all about their adventures - it was the perfect opportunity to talk about writing meaningful reflections! To start, we talked about the purpose of writing reflections, and what it means exactly to write something that is meaningful. We looked at a reflection I wrote about my winter break, and the students helped identify the characteristics that made it meaningful and high quality writing. They also pointed out some of the things I could work on for next time :) We used this list to make our first co-created rubric for writing a meaningful reflection. A co-created rubric means that the students help develop the criteria for how to assess a piece of writing. This is a valuable practice because the students have a stronger understanding for what their writing should look like, and can self-assess their work even better since they helped create the expectations. We will continue to co-create rubrics throughout this next project for the different types of write we do. Furthermore, we will use the language “On Target” and “Off Target” to assess our work. Just like a dart close to a bullseye, a student’s work that is “On Target” meets all of the expectations that we outlined before started the writing assignment. Here is the checklist we created for Reflection writing. The students used this checklist to assess their own writing once they felt like they completed the reflection. I was so incredibly impressed with the students’ reflections! It was some of the best work I have seen from them all year. The students seemed to have a clear purpose and understanding for their work, and I am excited to continue building high-quality writing with them throughout this next project. Math - Measurement and Problem Solving Math plays a very important role in our next project, so we changed up our schedule a little bit to accommodate more math into our daily schedule! Now, we spend at least one hour each morning on a targeted math concept. We explore the concept either through a whole group guided lesson, or student driven math workshop. Two of our main focuses moving forward are measurement and solving addition and subtraction problems related to measurement. To start, we talked about strategies for solving word problems. We outlined the steps we can take to solve a word problem: 1. Understand 2. Plan and Solve 3. Check Click here to see our steps more clearly Then, we jumped right in! We worked on a variety of word problems throughout the week. Some of them proved to be quite challenging, so we re-visted some familiar math materials, like a numberlines, hundreds charts, counters, and base ten blocks to help us solve double digit word problems. As the week progressed we moved into measurement. We are following the Engage New York curriculum to build our understanding for measurement. First, we started measuring without any measuring tools! We used blocks to practice the skills of measuring, such as measuring from endpoint to endpoint, not leaving spaces between cubes, and approximating length using the words "about" and "half." It just so happens that the blocks we used were exactly 1cm long! This lead us perfectly into investigating our first unit of measurement, Centimeters. We spent the rest of the week measuring classroom materials using centimeters, comparing lengths, and estimating lengths in centimeters. We still haven't broken out the rulers yet! Using the cm cubes gives students a clear visual of how big a centimeter is, and they can physically mark out each centimeter as they measure rather than simply reading the numbers on a ruler. Yoga We are lucky to have the Sean O’Shea Foundation returning this semester to continue teaching yoga! Students will go to Yoga on Thursday mornings! Me on the Map We are investigating maps to learn more about our world, and gain a deeper understanding for where we live. This knowledge will be especially valuable as we start looking at our community for our next project! We started with a gallery walk of a variety of maps, including AAA road maps, Disneyland park guides, and a world Atlas. During this gallery walk, students spent time making observations about maps with the goal of answering these three questions. 1. What do maps tell us? 2. What are some similarities you see on the maps? 3. What are some differences you see on the maps? We began small, mapping out the different communities we each live in. We made a class map that labels where each of us live in the greater San Diego area. Next, we looked at California. The students used computers to research the state and learned all kinds of fun facts! Did you know that the state animal, the grizzly bear, no longer lives in California? Next came our country. Students followed a similar exploration of using their computers to research the country. Click here to see the google docs the students used to conduct their research. Last, we talked about the continents. Once we had investigated the globe, we made our own Me on the Map guide. This art activity had students label their world from small (their city) to big (their continent). We will use our guides as a reference as we continue to explore our community and world throughout our next project. Here are some pictures from our week: Students at all the three High Tech Elementary schools had an amazing opportunity to participate in a school-wide STEAM week dreamed up by our awesome engineering teachers! STEAM stands for: Science Technology Engineering Art Math To learn more about STEAM education, check out this website. While a lot of our learning at HTeNC already focuses on these concepts, this week was extra special because it involved the whole school working together on one major project. STEAM week felt especially exciting for our class as we start our engineering exploratory for the trimester. Here are some highlights from our week: Engineering Experts We made a new friend this week! Ms. Torrey is an engineer at ViaSat, a satellite company. Her interest in engineering was sparked around the same age as our 2nd graders, and she had so many interesting experiences, jobs, and projects to share with us! Ms. Torrey painted us a picture of what it means to be an engineer, and then spent time in our classroom helping us build our Rube Goldberg machine. We are excited to have Ms. Torrey come back to help us with our future projects! We were also lucky enough to have Mr. Lee spend a good bit of time in our classroom helping us build our Rube Goldberg. Coding Our class worked on our computer coding skills through a coding program called scratch, and the website code.org. We also investigated the NCSS cause and effect relationship standard because it is an important foundational understanding for coding. We learned about If...then… logic statements, which serve as the primary function for building codes. For example, Lily said, “If I eat sugar, then I will have a lot of energy.” We made up our own "If..then.." statements and turned it into a game! Each student made a two part puzzle piece with an "If…" statement on piece, and a "then.." statement on the other. We walked around the classroom and connected our puzzle pieces to make a “code.” Rube Goldberg Machine The main event of the week was creating a Rube Goldberg machine! RG machines take many different forms, but the concepts is to create a complicated chain reaction that leads to carrying out a simple task. As a school, our task was for each class to build an RG that would knock down a small wooden block, which would start the next table's chain reaction. Students collaborated in small groups to build our classroom machine. They explored all kinds of materials and used their creativity to find new ways to use familiar classroom resources. They made tally charts to keep track of their successes and failures, so that we could determine which machine from our class should be added to our school wide one. They grappled with the unknown, listened to each other’s ideas, and displayed A LOT of perseverance. I can't tell you how hard it was to watch them set up Domino after Domino, only to see them fall over, setting off the entire chain reaction. Every time this happened, students would set their Dominos back up again! Check out the Rube Goldberg machine videos from our classroom, school, HTeCV and HTePL below! Here are some pictures and videos from our week: On Tuesday night, 60 proud, knowledgeable 2nd graders share their beautiful work with you, an audience of about 200. They should feel so proud of their research, their writing, their scientific sketch, and collaboration. Perhaps most importantly, they should feel proud of their bravery and ability to communicate their knowledge to an audience. I have witnessed so much growth, both socially and academically, throughout this project. I hope you can see the same. Thank you for your support throughout this project! Whether it was chaperoning field trips, supporting in the classroom, or engaging in conversations with your child, we couldn't have gotten to such a wonderful Exhibition without you. Now, I'm going to let the kids do the rest of the talking :) This week we started our countdown to exhibition! You could feel the anticipation rising throughout the whole school. We CAN'T WAIT to share all of our wonderful learning and beautiful work with you!
I started the week by asking the students how they were feeling about exhibition. One student beautifully captured the emotion many of us were feeling with her new word: Nervicited - A combination of feeling nervous and excited. Exhibition can be such a fun, proud moment for many students, but it can also feel like a very daunting task. It asks students to synthesize all of their learning throughout the project, present their work, and verbally express all of this new knowledge to an audience of familiar and unfamiliar guests. This event requires students to prepare, learn, and work in different ways that a typical school day, and pushes many students to step outside of their comfort zone. I was so proud of the students this week as we began our preparations. They embraced the nervous energy and put it towards preparing themselves for exhibition. The students have clear ideas for what they want exhibition to look like, and what they need to do to be ready for the event. Many students even took it upon themselves to write their own exhibition scripts without any support! Here are some highlights from our week: Working as a whole 2nd grade team One of my favorite parts about this project is how we have been able to work as a whole 2nd grade team. Students have had the opportunity to work with and learn from a variety of different student groups and teachers. We spent the majority of our week with the classroom walls open and mixed classrooms. The students have become more and more comfortable with this layout and seem to enjoy getting to move across the three classrooms. I hope this is something we can carry throughout the whole year! Project work is officially completed! All of the students finished typing and editing their informational paragraphs on the computer. The animal expert groups finished taking their photos for the community norm posters. The posters are printed and are BEAUTIFUL!! We owe Crescent a HUGE thanks for taking exceptional photos of the students that really captioned the school norm they were striving for. Assigning jobs and writing scripts Students will be presenting in their animal expert group at exhibition. These are the groups of 4-7 students from each 2nd grade class that focused in on a specific animal for further research, scientific sketches, and creating community norms. We did A LOT of work in our project, so each student in the group will be responsible for presenting on a specific part of the process, which are the following 1. Animal Fieldwork and Research 2. Informational Writing 3. Scientific Sketches 4. School Norms 5. Exploratory project Ask your child which part they are presenting! Once students had their roles, we worked together to write their scripts. It was exciting to see the students take off with these scripts! They did a great job of clearly explaining key concepts, sequencing events, and including important details and their own feelings tied into the process. Math Workshop We established a new routine for our math block that we will continue to use throughout the rest of the year. Students will move through three 30min math rotations throughout the week. The goal is for students to get to each rotation at least 2 times throughout the week. Here are the 3 rotations: 1. Binder Choices: We have a math binder which includes activities that target all of the concepts we have covered thus far in the school year. These independent or partner activities serve to review, strengthen conceptual understanding, and provide fluency practice for these key mathematical concepts. Students can choose 1 or 2 activities that they would like to do for the 30minute rotation. 2. ST Math: Students work on ST math for 30 minutes. At the end of the 30 minutes, they log their progress and note anything that felt really challenging to them. 3. Targeted instruction with Ms. Pasfield: I work with a small group of students for the following purposes: - Provide additional instruction or practice for students struggling with a certain topic - Delve deeper into a current topic - Introduce a new concept or activity - Assess students on current understanding of a topic Here are some pictures from our week We are only two weeks away from exhibition! This week, we started putting together our final products and reflecting on our learning over these past 9 weeks of study. This is the time where we start to look at the arc of our whole project, from start to finish. We begin to make connections across all of the learning and experiences we have had. This week I noticed a lot of students have that "aha!" moment as they recognize the purpose behind each step in our project and how one experiences is linked to the next. Our excitement is rising, we can't wait for exhibition!
Here are some highlights from our week: Project reflections We spent a lot of time this week looking at the big picture of our project. What was the purpose of our project? Here are some "big picture" questions we answered this week. Ask your child about them! 1. What is a community? 2. Why did we study animal communities? 3. What can we learn from animal communities that we can bring into our school community? We also looked at the sequence of events and broke our project down into these 5 main parts: 1. Animal Fieldwork and Research 2. Informational Writing 3. Scientific Sketches 4. School Norms 5. Exploratory project Community Norm Posters Students spent time this week planning what they want their posters for our giant poster book to look like. The last step in the process is for the group to take a photo of them acting out the school community norm. For example, the penguin group will demonstrate the norm: "We will all take turns using the school spaces and materials." Students brainstormed ideas independently, then came together as a group and decided on a scene. We had the wonderful Mrs. Crescent come in to photograph the groups! Bar Graphs Last week the students were so interested in collecting data from the school about our school norms. So, we decided to delve deeper into data collection practices! We focused this week on tally charts and bar graphs. We watched this brainpop video and talked about how collecting data helps us: 1. Get more information about a specific topic 2. See information in a different or clearer way 3. Make smart decisions on what to do next We collected data and made bar graphs on just about everything we possibly could this week! The students were even coming up with their own survey questions and collecting data during their free time :) Typing! The students learned how to type on Google Docs this week! They took their beautifully written informational paragraphs and typed them up using their chromebooks. A note about typing: I was extremely impressed with how the students took to their first major typing experience this year! If you have access to a computer, here are some ways you can help your child at home: 1. Be Encouraging! Typing can be really frustrating. There is a LOT of visual stimuli for a 7/8 year old, they are not familiar with the arrangement of the letters, or how different buttons (like enter and shift) really work. 2. Type with two hands - the first step in learning how to type is to use both hands. It will most likely look like hunting and pecking with their pointer fingers, but as long as that is with both of their pointer fingers, then they are on the right track! 3. Fun, free typing games online - How do you get better at typing? You practice! I have not used all of these before, so if your child uses one I would love the feedback! - typing.com : This was a favorite of my students last year. You can create an account if you would like, but otherwise you can just play the games for free. The only difference is that it doesn't track your progress - ABCya! - A great sight in general! - Type Type Revolution - This article has 12 great free keyboarding games! Here are some pictures from our week: This week we focused making the connection between animal communities and our class/school community. We have spent so much time learning about how animals act in their communities. Now, What can we learn from it? How can we use that information to build norms for how we should act? Here are some highlights from our week: Why do scientists study animals? This was an important question we tried to answer this week. Animal research can teach us so much about our world and even ourselves. We came up with two main reasons for why scientists study animals. 1. To learn more about the animals and be able to help them. 2. To see how animal behaviors are similar to human behaviors. Animal Research Groups The whole 2nd grade is working together to create norms for our school community! Students are in mixed groups of 4-7 based off of their scientific sketch animal. We have groups of wolves, lions, giraffes, bees, ants, dolphins, meerkats, elephants, fish, and penguins. Ask your child about what animal they've been studying! First, the students met with their small groups to conduct further research on their animal. They used nonfiction books and online articles written for kids, and then came together to talk about the facts they found about the animal and its community. Next, students were challenged to make a connection between their animal community and our own community. For example, "Each ant has a special job that helps their colony survive." The connection to our school community that the ant group made was "We all work together to make our school a happy and successful place." Here are the connections that the students made: We will use this information, along with students' scientific sketches and a photo of the group acting out the school norm, to create a giant posters book to display in our school. Data Collection We had an important realization as we started writing our school norms: We needed feedback from the school! It did not seem fair to create school norms without making sure the whole school liked and agreed to them. In their animal research groups, the students went to every classroom and staff member to get their opinion on the school norm they created. We also had our student collaborative members present to the rest of the committee. The students used a tally chart to record how many people liked the norm, and how many people did not. They also wrote down any critique that people gave them on how to make the norm better. Good news: The school really liked our norms! This was really important because it means that we can continue on with our project! Pumpkin Patch Oh, the stories that will come from the visit to the pumpkin patch! While we had lots of fun, one of the rides got the best of us. I believe it's safe to say that most of us were feeling better by Friday when we cut into our class pumpkin :) Math- Estimation Pumpkins provide a great teaching opportunity to talk about Estimation! First, we talked about how estimation means to make an educated guess. We many not know the exact answer, but we can use our knowledge about the topic and do a little research to help inform our estimation. When we make estimations, we use words like about, approximately, close to, roughly, and around and estimations that include numbers usually end with a 0 (ex. 570 rather than 572). First, we started by just making a guess without using any resources. We had every number between 100 and 1,000,000! Then, we did a little research. We found out these three things: 1. A medium sized pumpkin usually has about 500 seeds in it. 2. Number of sections in a pumpkin X 16 = Approximate number of pumpkin seeds inside 3. Usually, the bigger the pumpkin, the fewer pumpkin seeds inside Now with this information, we made our estimates. Using this calculation we found that our pumpkin most likely had about 530 pumpkin seeds in it. Then, students made their own educated guess using this information. We opened our pumpkin and counted the seeds. There were 673 pumpkin seeds inside! Diego had the closes estimate of 700 seeds. Here are some pictures from our week: |
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