5 Countries in 5 Days

One of my favorite weeks in 2nd grade was our multicultural week. Each day we focused on a different country. We really immersed the students in that country. For instance, on the day we studied China our morning message, which is placed on a PowerPoint slide contained clip art showing a chinese dragon and some chinese writing. I even showed my SBTE how to insert sound so we had chinese music on our PowerPoint slide. Throughout the morning I would pick a student who was on task and ask them to play the sound clip. I wore a shirt that had chinese writing. We hung lanterns with chinese writing. Our early morning read aloud was The Five Chinese Brothers. Our Language focus that week was the story of Cinderella. The students were able to hear and/or read The Persian Cinderella, Adelita, The Talking Egg (an African American tale similar to Cinderella) and do various compare/contrast activities using this literature such as, a content frame, a venn diagram, and a quadrant.

Each table of students had a bucket of books with stories from each of the countries. We rotated these buckets daily so that children were able to read books from each culture. We continued this activity into the next week.

They had a center time each day where they made a craft from the different countries. I also researched games from that country and we played one each day. We had several speakers come and talk to the children and bring in artifacts from their country. One speaker was a parent who attends our on campus parent center. We used resources from our library and children brought in artifacts to share as well. We set up mini museums each day with artifacts from the various countries. The children loved showing and telling about their various artifacts. On Friday we had a feast and the children rotated between four tables where they were served a sampling of food from Africa, Mexico, India and China.

My only criticism was there wasn't enough time. There never is enough time, but I believe all the 2nd grade teachers were in agreement that they would like to extend this unit to at least two weeks next year.

Virtual Tour

Last week my class was studying communities in social studies. One activity they completed was a virtual tour of historical buildings in downtown Katy. It was a PowerPoint put together by some discendents of the founding families. It was placed on a share drive so that it could be accessed by any class studying Katy. The students each had a map containing the numbers 1-9 which showed the location of each site we would be visiting on our virtual tour. Each PowerPoint slide contained a picture of the historic place as well as a picture of the historic placque in front of the building. As we toured the sites, the students marked their maps via different color crayons. In addition, they made their own key. They also explained how to get to point 1 to point 2 using directional terms such as, go east 2 blocks and south 3 1/2 blocks. The PowerPoint added an incredible dimension to this lesson. PowerPoint presentations with pictures and/or sound can be easily incorporated into hundreds of lessons across any curriculum and be a welcome addition to our visual, auditory, and oral learners.

Computer Lab - Larson's Math

Our school has a program called Larson's math. I have seen various grade levels use this valuable math tool such as, kindergarten, 3rd grade and 2nd grade. It is available for k-5th at our school. Each child has their own login name and password. The program reinforces valuable foundations in math such as, measuring, adding, subtracting, multiplying, patterning, and geometry spatial skills, to name a few. The program is extremely engaging and fun for the students. It is also a valuable assessment tool for the teacher. I found out on Friday that a teacher can access her class roster and determine which parts of the lesson a student has completed and what percentage of correct answers that child has obtained. It also shows how much time the student spent working on any given section. It allows teachers to take a grade, know what concepts her class has mastered, and what concepts need further teaching or reteaching.

Geometry Scavenger Hunt

As luck would have it, my class studied cones, cylinders, spheres, rectanglar prisms, and pyramids this past week. As a culmination to the unit study I took small groups on a scavenger hunt for these shapes in the real world. I shared the PowerPoint my group had put together in our Quest 2 math methods class first. A student would find a shape, then another student in their group would take a digital picture. We continued the hunt until each student had taken a picture, and been in a picture. The students (2nd graders) had a blast. This week I have tried to find time to bring each one to the computer so they could build their page of the class PowerPoint on their shapes. They inserted their picture from a file, sized it, inserted a text box to type their name in any font and size. Then they inserted another text box and typed the name of their shape, and how many faces, edges, and vertices it contained. In some cases they resized the font or moved their pictures or text to a newly desired location. We just have a few more pages to complete (from students who were absent). I can't wait until the students see their finished product!