I know it’s been A WHILE since I have posted, but there are a lot of neat things going on in our classroom! First, the fun stuff, then the free stuff! There’s pictures of our science project (I got lots of compliments when we did it last year), funny second grade responses on flip grid, and lots of links to free resources, so make sure to scroll through the whole thing!)
Science (Stem)
For the fun stuff, one fun thing we did this week was starting to make our 3 little pig houses! They can’t be blown down by the big bad wolf, and using what we know about properties of matter, we found out that flour and water makes the strongest mortar. We planned our houses. Here is a slideshow of our planning and what our houses look like right now. The lessons can be found at https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/All-About-Matter-Aligns-with-NGSS-2-PS1-1234-and-K-2-ETS1-1-2-science-799909.
Flipgrid
Next, a Flipgrid update! We’ve been using Flipgrid for some pretty neat things!
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Before, we used Padlet video to make videos to create problems for other students to solve. This week we used Flipgrid to show how to solve math problems. I also earned a new badge this week for 50 video responses!! I gave the students a choice between two problems. They picked which one they wanted to solve and recorded a video explaining the answer and how they got the answer. What a great way to assess!
Also, before Christmas we recorded videos on flip grid of our opinion writing of what we believed would be the worst Christmas present ever. Some of the answers included, “…Snakes because snakes make make me upset because they bite me. That’s not my style,” “…A meteor crashing because you would die when it hit your house and everyone would start freaking out and crying,” and the traditional “…Coal because it is boring, you can’t do anything with it, and you cannot even play with it.”
New Year, New Room
I took all the furniture out and put desk back in… Yeah, I know! All that hard work! We had a behaviorist come into our room before break, which led to a lot of changes. I have the perfect storm of students this year who I absolutely LOVE, but who also feed off each other all day long, try to get my attention in every single way possible, and have many different backgrounds, so this year is a little different than other years.
The first change was the seating. The second change is we have a cotton ball shop now! Students earn cotton balls throughout the day when they do what they are supposed to and do it respectfully. On Fridays, we have a cotton ball shop with parent volunteers. The students shop at the shop with the amount of their cotton balls. At the end of each day, we count our cotton balls, and we record the number, graph the number, and then all cotton balls are returned to the bins.
We also started using fun transition cards to help us transition. Some fun ones can be found at https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Transition-Cards-for-Between-Subjects-217142.
We use this for our cotton balls, and I just whited out the percentage signs, so students can graph by number. It’s also a great graph for students to graph scores with, and it’s FREE!! https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Data-Tracking-Graph-847624
My cotton ball tracker sheet is also FREE and EDITABLE (In case you don’t use cotton balls) and can be found at https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Positive-Behavior-Tracker-3584443.
Teacher Station 