The Scientific Method

Spontaneous Problem: Name ways to say "I love you!"
Boundary Breaker: When is the last time you were a scientist?  What did you discover?

Today was a heavy math day as we aimed to finish up Chapter 1 on patterns in place value before the break.  Students played Some Sum and organized digits to create number pairs resulting in the largest and then smallest sums.  They also discovered the Commutative Property of addition as they found all 4 combinations that could result in a winning total.  We then showed our learning on the chapter as a whole with out skills check-up.

We finished by introducing part 2 of our exploration unit, Exploring through Problem Solving.  We began by reading Ada Twist: Scientist by Andrea Beaty (cutest book ever!) and looking at the scientific method as a problem solving tool.  Today we went through the steps an conducted a class test to see how many random numbers a second grader could hold in their brain without forgetting.  Check out our format here.  Five was the lucky number that discredited all of our confident hypotheses.

Time Travel

Spontaneous Problem: Name three syllable words.
Boundary Breaker:  Students were given some quick thinking math problems and then asked to think of a number between 5-12.  For the Boundary Breaker, students had to give their reasoning for why they thought most people pick 7.

Look at these beauties!

For math, second graders built off last week and tackled the place value game, Some Sum by trying to use digits 0-9 to create a number closest to the round's target number.  They used their mathematical language to share their thought process and strategy.

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!