We had a fantastic day of learning in MOSAICS!

 

We started our Oceans unit with some thinking about why our oceans are important and why we should protect them.  We considered the problem of ocean trash, analyzed what makes up ocean trash, and went on a hunt around Green Trails for things that could end up in the ocean.  

 

In Math Stretch, we explored how people use their math toolboxes in the real world and used those ideas to dive into our challenge math work.  During this time, students work at their own pace on a variety of problems that will require students to choose the appropriate tools from the math toolbox.  Sometimes, we will come across something new and will have to discover new tools.  We tried a few problems together, then the kids were on it!

 

In "Let's Code Stuff", we set up our coding accounts and started coding a jump game.  We have sprites that can jump and obstacles that can move across the screen so far.

 

In HOT Time, we learned to think like a detective for deductive thinking.  We use clues to eliminate information that does not work so that we can narrow the clues down to one correct solution.

 

In Creative Thinking, we did some thinking around the month of October as we learned about Fluency (thinking of many ideas), Flexibility (shifting mental gears), Originality (unusual solutions), and Elaboration (adding details). 

 

Have a great week!

What a wonderful day working with your children today!  It was wonderful to get to know them better and to get a glimpse of their minds in action.  It's going to be a great year.

 

We kicked off our journey by learning a little bit about how we build muscle.  Ask your child about micro tears.  We learned that we have to do things that are difficult for us if we want to build our muscles.  We looked at how that translates to our brains and why it's important to to not give up when things are difficult.

 

Students enjoyed creating devices to rescue stranded ducks out of a pond.  They also had to work together to draw things with a marker they had to work as a team to manipulate.  Make sure you check out the pictures on our Facebook Page and give them a like!  We also enjoyed sculpting some things about ourselves out of playdough.

 

We learned about our weekly schedule that will begin next week.  For your information, our day is divided into several learning blocks:

 

Major Study-this is the main topic that we explore throughout the year.  This unit is the catalyst for our research, communication, and thinking standards.  For 2nd grade, our topic is Oceans.

 

Minor Study-this is a shorter unit of study that the students select from a menu of choices.  This is an enrichment unit and focuses on student interests.  The kids chose "Let's Code Stuff" for this unit, so we will be learning to code different robots, games, and animations.

 

HOT Time-stands for Higher Order Thinking.  This is where the brain stretch part of our day lives.  We work on thinking skills--divergent, convergent, logic, analogy, analytics, etc.  We fill our toolbox with strategies for solving novel problems.

 

Creative Thinking-this time is all about developing our creative thinking skills.  We explore different strategies to increase the number, divergency, originality, and elaboration of our ideas.  

 

Math Stretch-here, we use the skills being mastered in the general education setting to solve real-world problems and complexities.  We expand our thinking about math and pick up some new skills along the way.

 

I promise my updates will not always be this long.  They are also archived on my website if there's ever something you'd like to refer back to.  

 

Have a great week!