Back in Gear!

Day 2 after Spring Break and… 2G brains are back in gear!

MORNING CIRCLE BRAIN ACCELERATION

Morning Circle kicked off with a review of the common ways the long ā, ō and ē sounds are made, with students providing examples of each method.

Once the gears started turning, there was no stopping them!

But Ms. Erin had an engaging geography story from Thailand that redirected thought patterns from Language Arts to world tales!

And off 2G went again!

WHOLE-GROUP MATH

Today’s whole-group learning focused on math: addition with regrouping, and subtraction with regrouping.

If you are helping your student with subtraction and need to “borrow” from the place to the left of the one with a deficiency, just chant…

Take away one, add ten
Take away one, add ten
Take away one, add ten

And your student should remember what s/he needs to do!

Students enjoyed working in pairs. The math talk was great!

7 and 8 year olds are easily frustrated when “I didn’t get it right.”

We work hard to stress, “We’re learning! Just notice what you might have missed, and tell your brain to look for that next time!”

3-STATION ROTATION ACCELERATION!

2G settled nicely into our 3-Station Rotation routine.

Wonderful to see students striving to write “interesting” sentences.

Fantastic math discussions about angles, intersection and perpendicular lines, and what we call nine-side shapes!

SHARING, CANE TOADS & RIGHT ANGLES

Rich sharing today!

Parker brought his ukulele and performed for us.

Ray brought his Saturn V rocket!

When I was in 2G, I wanted to be an astronaut. So wide eyes as I explained what a Saturn V rocket was designed to do, asked why rockets had more than one stage, and had fun using terms like “Command Module” and “Lunar Excursion Module.”

I told 2G it looked like we were heading back to the moon… : )

Sharing also involved math and science deliberation.

From math, what is a right angle, and why are right angles so important?

And as we’d seen two cane toads today and someone had asked, “Why are there so many toads at school?” we explored that question too.

Once 2G “got it” about right angles, they were seeing them everywhere and commenting on how pillars and table legs that were not at right angles to the floor/ground would be dangerous.

And there reasons why there were so many cane toads at HNS went… on and on!