MS. RIVIELLO'S GRADE 2 CLASS

Confucius says:

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

Today we attempted to do…and simulated how the solar system works, specifically how the planets move around the sun. The students were divided into 2 groups and had to organize and plan how the solar system works using their bodies. It was very interesting to observe how they organized themselves into who will be what object in the sky.  They also needed to show one characteristic of that object on them – like is Mars is called the red planet, they would show that in any form they wanted to ( hold a red object etc..) Enjoy the photos.

The most important objects in the solar system to us are the sun, earth and moon. The sun because without it we wont survive, the earth because it is our home, and the moon because it’s movements significantly affect us on earth. Today in class we set out to demonstrate how these three objects move in relation to each other or how they are interconnected. For this experiment we used a globe to represent the earth, a flashlight to represent the sun and a styrofoam ball to represent the moon. Then we set out to discover for ourselves how these three are interconnected.

Did you know that the sun is a star? It is a huge ball of very hot glowing gas. The ancient Romans called the sun ” Sol”. It is the largest object in our solar system: Here are more discoveries we made today after reading a book on the sun :

• The sun’s core is as big as Jupiter
• The sun has a cloud of gases surrounding it
• The center of the sun called the core has a temperature of 15,000,000 degrees Celsius
• It is about 75 % hydrogen and 25% helium
• Sunspots are cooler than the gas around them

There were many more discoveries made by the students today and for fun we recorded them in a yellow circle poster.

How far is the sun from the Earth? How far is the Earth from Neptune? Did you say MILLIONS OF MILES AWAY?? MILLIONS?  It’s hard for me to count to 5,000 !!! The idea of millions of miles away is too abstract for anyone let alone an 8 year old. So today we decided to scale down the distances of objects from the solar system to have a better understanding of  how far they are from each other. We also scaled down the sizes of the sun and the planets so we can have a good visual of their sizes in relation to each other.  The rest of the story is for your child to explain. Ask them what our activity is today and how we did it.

Our new unit will focus on the concept of Discovery. As a launch to the unit, all grade 2 classes went to the planetarium to find out about the solar system and other interesting objects in space. After a 45 minute presentation which was somewhat a simulation of us being space travellers, we visited the museum and searched for some answers to our questionaire sheet. 

In this unit we will attempt to understand that all of us are scientists  and that scientific investigation will help us unlock the mysteries of what lies beyond earth.

Here are our guiding questions:

1. What is beyond earth ?

2. How is the solar system interconnected?

3. Why does day and night happen?

Our last day of 2011 was bitter sweet. We were thrilled at the prospect of starting our holidays and spending some time with family and friends but it was also the last day of  Yein. She has been a wonderful member of our learning journey and we will always be grateful for all her contributions in making our class very special. We miss her a lot and wish her and her family well in their life back in Korea.

One activity we did to teach visualization is visualize, draw and reflect. Parent volunteers read an entire book without showing the pictures. After that, the students were asked to choose one image  that stuck in their head. They had to draw that  picture and write about it. To help you child visualize at home, it is good to model some of your think aloud visualizations.
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 The mind has amazing abilities to create pictures or images in our head. We do this when we read or listen to stories or music. The text that we read helps us visualize and our experiences help make that image clearer. We need to teach and help our children visualize while they read. It is a powerful reading strategy that helps them in their understanding and appreciation of the author’s words.

This week our class discovered some very interesting 3D shapes. What are 3D shapes? Any shape that has a height, length and width and is a solid is considered to be 3D. We found out that 3D shapes have faces, edges, vertices and bases. Today we played around with some 3D objects and used our knowledge to identify their parts. We also  listed down examples of real life objects around us that  resemble those 3D shapes.

This week we read a few books which are classified as biographies. A biography is a detailed description or account of someone’s life. More than a list of basic facts (education, work, relationships, and death), biography also portrays the subject’s experience of those events. ( wikipedia definition).  After reading and talking about each book,  we created a timeline of that person’s life. First, we outlined the important events and then used a measurement tool to make sure that our timelines were accurate. All these activities gave our class enough practice to create a timeline of our own life.