First Week of Math

I love me some Amy Lemons at Step into Second Grade.  Because I am brand new this year to 2nd grade, her blog has been a life-line for me!  I'm planning on doing everything Amy does!  She's a Texas teacher and a rockstar up there with my Cara Carroll and Reagan Tunstall!  :D

I can tell that Amy really likes to teach Math.  She comes up with some amazing ideas to get kidos engaged in a fun, interactive way!  Love that about her!

We used her great ideas on Tools vs Toys.  The kidos loved sorting the items and it really has struck home with them.  Not that I haven't caught an occasional little one building a tower with his base ten blocks but for the most part they have been really good!  :D

We also used her AMAZING idea of Silent Puzzles!  Wow, that was a big challenge for us to do the first week of school but we did it.  Collaborative grouping is such a great way to engage learners.  You really see leadership that bubbles up to the top or the followers that just do whatever someone tells them to do or the one that wants to only work by themself.  It's all very telling to me.  

Graph it Out!

Graphing is one of my students favorite things to do in Math.  We took this cutie patootie idea to the next level by graphing out and analyzing our bubble blowing data.  :D
My kids will tell you I'm kind of a sugar nazi!  I never give my children candy or sweets. So, needless to say they were shocked when I let them chew gum for this project.   Of course, to blow the biggest bubbles you have to have the most sugary gum you can find!
We chewed and chewed and then practiced blowing bubbles.  It was a fun process and they all wanted so badly to be able to blow a bubble.  But it definitely is a skill!  Kinda like whistling, tieing your shoes, and snapping your fingers.  Just takes a first grader time and lots of practice.  :D

We made a pictograph first based on our experiment:

We then turned our pictograph into a student created bar graph:

And using Interactive Writing, we analyzed our data:

Each kido used the torn art technique that I love to make their self portrait.  We used real balloons to imitate what their bubble looked like.  You could use crumpled up pink tissue paper instead of real balloons.  Up to you.  They all looked so cute together out in the hall!