Blog Archives

Where We Are in Place and Time: Communities evolve in response to their environment

3/24/2017

This week , we began our new unit by tuning in with the question, Why do cities change? We observed new books in our library area, our unit of inquiry board, and artifacts in the exploration station to make predictions about our new unit. We will unpack our central idea and explore our first line of inquiry after spring break.

Throughout this unit of inquiry, I would like for students to think about...

Connections
Opinions
Wonders

Tuning in: Why do cities change?

Learning more about our city with Junior Achievement. Thank you to our volunteer, Andy Lane, of Wells Fargo.

This game of withdrawals/deposits was a lot of fun!

Using books to inspire us for writing Persuasive Speeches

Student-Led Conferences

Conference Stations

Authors and Artists

"Spring into Books Week"

Trading books on Monday

"Twins Day" Tuesday

"Thinking Cap" Thursday

"Fuzzy Friends" Friday

Have a great spring break!!

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Designing, Budgeting, and Inquiring

3/18/2017

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All of our designs will be on display during Student-Led Conferences this week

Finding out....Pizza Party on a Budget

Sorting Out

Making Conclusions

Elena taking action after a text-to-self connection with Mama Panya's Pancakes

Thumb Piano

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Learning about Entrepreneurs

3/11/2017

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We started the week with Tristan's mom, Mrs. Williams (local entrepreneur). We've been so lucky to have her as a room mom for 2 years and tasting some of her baked goods. This week, we were able to hear about how her business began and how it's still growing. You can visit her website to learn more about her catering service, Pearl Flower Catering http://www.pearlflowercatering.com/

Learning about entrepreneurs in other parts of the world
What similarities/differences do you notice? (local vs global)
How did their economic decisions affect their community?

Reading and writing about entrepreneurs

Learning about America's natural resources in different parts of the USA, while traveling by riverboat, taxi, train and plane....to make a cherry pie!

Thinking about resources and reflecting on the book, How to Make a Cherry Pie...got us wondering about other resources that we might not have here. What does import/export mean? What do we import/export?

Learning about supply vs demand and using line graphs to help illustrate how the law of demand works.

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An inquiry into why people work, current events, graphs...and a little fun!

3/5/2017

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Last year in grade 2, we wondered if it was possible to live without money? Many said it was, and found evidence during their SOLE investigation to support their reasons. So now, in grade 3 we want to know, Why Work?

What happens when you don't have enough money for the things you want/need?

Can a budget help organize your money? Does it help you get the things you need /want?

Let's try this out. You have $10.00 to spend on school supplies. How will you spend it? What did you get? What was your opportunity cost?

Let's see if we can apply what we are learning in our unit, How We Organize Ourselves to make connections with our local economy using our newspaper, The Plain Dealer.

Central Idea: Economic decisions provide opportunities.

Taking what we've learned and creating our own smoothie business.

After spending weeks learning about the different ways we can graph information, we decided to spend a day collecting data during the 3 different lunch/recess periods. We came up with topics we were interested in knowing different opinions on, and decided which age group would be the best to survey for each topic. We created tally charts and set out to collect. Afterwards, we took our data home and turned it into 3 different types of graphs to show our results. We presented our graphs to the class.
The coolest part was comparing the results with our classmates opinions.

This was a fun way to learn about graphs and to find out that there are several ways we organize information.

Thank you to our Mandarin teachers for another wonderful Chinese New Year Celebration. We loved the art stations and of course, the dumplings!

Celebrating Dr. Seuss and Read Across America on March 2nd

I am so proud of how far students have come with planning their day and completing weekly reflections. It helps when they see me planning and reflecting each day. They know that these are life skills and we do this to help improve our self-management skills (how we organize ourselves). They see that some days we don't get as much as we hoped done, because life happens. We have to be flexible and pick-up where we left off the next day. Sometimes we completely get off track with our plans...and that's ok.
Everyday we learn, laugh, and love!!

Eloise shared her autographed copy of, Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges. What a special way to end our celebration of Black History month through books!

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Where We Are in Place and Time: Communities evolve in response to their environment

Designing, Budgeting, and Inquiring

Learning about Entrepreneurs

An inquiry into why people work, current events, graphs...and a little fun!

Author:
Dora Bechtel

Archives:
http://cissecondgrade.weebly.com/bechtel

Where We Are in Place and Time: Communities evolve in response to their environment

Designing, Budgeting, and Inquiring

Learning about Entrepreneurs

An inquiry into why people work, current events, graphs...and a little fun!

Author: ​Dora Bechtel

Archives:http://cissecondgrade.weebly.com/bechtel

Author:
Dora Bechtel

Archives:
http://cissecondgrade.weebly.com/bechtel