Archaeological Adventure!

We hit the road to Charleston to check out what history we could discover at Colonial Dorchester and Charlestowne Landing.

Colonial Dorchester gave us a peek into colonial life in South Carolina as far back as 1697!  Students were able to tour and participate in the excavation still happening on the site today.

 

 

Charlestowne Landing is the preserved site of the first English settlement in South Carolina, founded in 1670!  Students were able to tour the land and museum and see how archaeologists have used their discoveries to recreate structures present in the original town.

No Third Graders Allowed! :)

Spontaneous Problem: Name things you need to go explore.
Boundary Breaker: When was the last time you were an explorer?  What did you discover?

Today the second graders had the place to themselves.  We used our time to fill in some gaps, progress in math, and brush up on the elements of creativity.

We used the Children't Guide to Critical Thinking to explore the three types of thinkers: Naive Nancy, Selfish Sam, and Fairminded Fran.  We evaluated each based on the 5 standards of thinking and used our role-model, Fran as a critical thinking exemplar!

In math, we played Some Sum where students used the randomly drawn digits 0-9 to build an addition problem with the largest answer.  We also flipped the strategy to build the smallest sum. Students used their knowledge of place value and the commutative property to find all the possible winning combinations for each round.

The most fun activity of the day was creating our Nerd sculptures.  Each student selected an element of creativity to demonstrate in their art.

The elaborate rainbow nerd.

This flexible cherry nerd with a leaf umbrella.

Time Travel

Standards of Thinking were our group focus this morning as we tuned in to The Children's Guide to Critical Thinking videos to learn the basic characteristics of critical thinkers.  We took notes and looked at examples of the five traits...fair, relevant, clear, logical, and accurate!

For math, second graders tackled the place value game, Card Capers by trying to use digits 0-9 to create a number closest to the round's target number.

For the bulk of our day, students were called on to help me with a slight dilemma where they used their learning to come through with flying colors!  Our ancient civilization time travel mystery served as a culminating event for this unit and we look forward to starting on exploring through problem solving when we are back together after the break!

Artifacts Underway!

Spontaneous Problem: Name things that close.
Boundary Breaker: You have been given a big ALERT project to work on with a partner.  What are three characteristics you would want in the partner you choose.  Explain your choices.

This morning we finished our final edits to our research and crafted our artifacts!  Students who did not complete research projects looked at the Habit of Mind "Questioning and Posing Problems" with our mystery box activity.  We discussed quality questioning and narrowing a larger category with general questions rather than specific ones.  They also were able to explore some of their spark activities on Thrively.

Together we read Round Trip by Ann Jonas to highlight creative and flexible thinking.  The book is original in that each page tells two stories, one right-side up, and one upside-down!

In math, second graders went back to the Maneki Neko bank challenge and looked for a pattern and rule they could use to find the number of penny and dime combinations for any amount of change. Third graders wrapped up Chapter 2 and played "The Race in Base" game in both base 3 and base 10 to help them further compare the two systems.  They also got to practice reading and translating numbers in base three.  They had fun calculating their Land of Treble ages.

The Dip

For our Morphic Thinking routine today, I pulled out my favorite game, Balderdash, and with a twist on the rules we turned it into our morning warm-up.
Spontaneous Problem:  Define the word zamouse.  Students shared their list of ideas and although it really means a West-African buffalo, we adopted the special ALERT meaning of "magician".
Boundary Breaker:  Students were given the movie title Feet First and challenged to come up with a convincing plot line.  With the actual one hidden in the mix we shared the responses and voted on the most likely (and most entertaining!).

Today the old crew great progress on our projects.  Most all of our research is complete and we are drafting our museum placards.  We even have some editing and artifact design going on!  I can't wait to see the final products!

Our new crew looked at solving analogy brain stretchers and read the book Why Explore by Susan Lendroth. Students brainstormed and discussed reasons why people explore, and how there is an innate explorer in all of us.  They also were able to share their own curiosities and motivations.

Next, second graders got to crack open our M^3 (Mentoring Mathematical Minds) text in order to begin unraveling the case of the Moli Stone.  This fictitious stone was just uncovered in an archaeological dig in China.  Throughout the unit, students will build on their knowledge of place value and number systems in order to decode the symbols and unravel their hidden meaning.  Today we counted the change in a Maneki Neko bank and explored the different combinations we could use to total 47 cents using only dimes and pennies.  Students practiced communicating their thinking through writing as they proved to a friend how they knew all the possible combinations had been found.

As a whole group, we  looked at the Habit of Mind, persisting today.  Students watched a short video describing the learning journey as having dips.  We discussed positive mindsets for those dips and did the T puzzle challenge which certainly allowed students to experience the struggle, as well as the feeling of accomplishment on the other side of it!

Third graders wrapped up with our Land of Treble math, as students took some time to explain their regrouping practices in the base 3 system and compare and contrast it from our Base 10 system.

New Faces and the Furious Notetakers

Spontaneous Problem: Name place you could find a quarter.
Boundary Breaker: What is the best gift you've ever given. Explain.

For third graders today...

• We worked on using our sources to write notes highlighting discoveries about our cultural universals in the civilization of our choice.  These notes were recorded in our interactive notebooks in our own words to lay the foundation for our research placards.  Next week we plan to begin on some artifact design!
• We revisited the Land of Treble, this time looking at subtraction in base 3. 

For second graders (and new third graders) today...

• We added to our numbers and got to take a look at some of the staples of our ALERT classroom.  We were introduced to what it means to be in the program and why they are here.  
• We met the Nerds, our mascots of creativity, and learned the four parts of creative thinking with our doodle activity.  
• We also looked at Art Costa's Habits of Mind as strategies to grow as successful learners.  We played Habits of Mind Bingo to get familiar with the set of skills.  Throughout the year we will focus on these individually as students build their talents.
• Follow this link to a post that will explain some of our classroom elements in greater detail.

Pre-break Wrap-Up

Spontaneous Problem:  Name things that work upside down.
Boundary Breaker:  What does the author of this quote mean?

Today we did a lot of wrapping up to get ready for our winter break.  Students finished their Roman mosaics and were able to use any early finisher time to explore some of their interest sparks assigned to them on Thrively.  

For research, we worked on using our sources to write notes highlighting our discoveries about our cultural universals in the civilization of our choice.  These notes were recorded in our interactive notebooks in our own words to lay the foundation for our research placards we will begin after break.

We wrapped up our base 3 lesson in the Land of Treble as students practiced communicating their ideas and understandings by writing their responses to some problem solving prompts brought up in the lesson.

We also had some fun playing brain games for indoor recess.