2nd grade CODERS?!

Mrs. Breaux came in on Monday morning to teach our class how to code! The children were excited and eager to plug in a variety of codes to decorate a tree on the White House lawn. Read more information below from Mrs. Breaux to learn more.

Information from Mrs. Breaux regarding coding:

All of this and more can be found on  DrydenTech/Cracking the Code webpage; 

Coding lessons will be conducted for all grade levels in the 2014-15 school year.  During December, some Hour of Code lessons will be conducted with a cross section of grades and/or classrooms.

Here's a great Brainpop video to explain coding to grade schoolers.  brainpop.com/technology/computerscience/computerprogramming/

Years ago, when I was learning to code, the languages were very complex and I found coding to be very difficult.  When the idea of coding in grade school was suggested, I wondered "how in the world can this be possible?".  To my delight, I discovered that Coding Languages have evolved and CODING IS FUN for everyone!!!  It's so much fun I don't want to stop coding.  

Educators have done a great job "parsing and sequencing" code into logical, progressive steps that are easy to learn and build upon.  Most K-5 coding exercises offer tips and prompts to empower students with the ability to independently resolve conflicts and move forward through the sequences.

Coding is a great way to introduce students to the concept of "owning their learning".  Doing coding exercises before or during Personal Learning is a great way to demonstrate and reinforce independent work, clear and precise communication of questions and directions, perseverance, being fearless, and "failing forward" which is when you learn through iterations and adjustments until you gain success.  

When you are Coding, the program gives you immediate feedback.  It's a great opportunity to teach students that frustration is part of the human process of problem solving.  Students can learn how to Fail Forward:  which mean to learn from what you did; use iteration; keep trying and adjusting until you get a different result. Persist. Persevere.

Coding is also a great opportunity to allow students to become the expert in the room, in charge of their own learning. 

There are two types of code typically suggested for grade schools.  The examples below utilize block coding which is perfect for our school population.

• K-5: Block-based code - teaches logic through drag and drop "blocks of code" 
• 6-12: Script-based/Syntax code - uses syntax; requires typing and language skills

Hour of Code Resources (shorter lessons, great for the holidays)

Made w/ Code (block code) from Google offers three holiday themed and many other projects that can be done in short time frames.  Access from a browser on Computer or iPad.  Easy to do at home or in classroom centers.  Great for winter break activities.

code.org: Code with Anna & Elsa of Frozen (block code) an hour of code instruction with progressively more challenging coding steps. 

code.org: Angry Birds (block code) more hour of code fun with the popular angry birds series.

code.org: Play Lab (block code) in addition to moving blocks and selecting variables, this set of exercises offers fill in the "words" to increase the skill level.

All these options from CODE.ORG can be accessed from a browser on Computer or iPad.  Easy to do at home or in classroom centers.  No login required.

Scratch: Holiday Card : the folks at MIT developed Scratch and Scratch Jr in an effort to get younger students engaged in coding.  Scratch can be a little more challenging, but students quickly adapt and love it.  Available on computer from your browser.  Because it uses flash animation, it is not available from the browser on the ipad, BUT there is an app you can download.  

Scratch Hour of Code 2014 : see additional projects here.

Blockly Games from Google (block code) - Blockly Games is a series of educational games that teach programming. It is designed for children who have not had prior experience with computer programming.  By the end of these games, players are ready to use conventional text-based languages.  Access from a browser on a computer.  (ipad glitchy)

A prosperous week in 2-2!

What a full week we had at school!

Our whole group story this week was called "The Alvin Ailey Kids School of Dance." The children again worked on the skill of summarizing. We pulled the most important parts sequentially out of the story to create a summary. The children worked on the irregular verb "have" during grammar. 

Our text talk story of the week was "Everybody Cooks Rice." It was a cute story about a little girl off to find her brother for dinner. She stops in at all of her neighbors' houses looking for him, sampling their dinners along the way. The little girl noted that her neighbors were from Italy, Germany, France, Barbados and more, and they all were having their own versions of rice for dinner.  The robust words we practiced this week include: community, appetizing, grumbling, diversity,  The children kept track of their usage of these new words on the white board. The winner of the week was ... diversity!                                                                                                          

                                                             

Our geometry lessons continue! Using  "Magneatos" (magnetic pieces) the children worked to identify lines of symmetry in a series of shapes. They also worked with partner to create series of pyramids. The children practiced identifying the faces, bases, edges and vertices on each shape.        

                                                                                                 

The children and I began our studies of how holidays are celebrated in countries other than our own. We talked about the holidays in both Germany and Mexico. The children enjoyed constructing a tree using their traced hands as branches. They also created poinsettias to adorn our classroom based on the flower that Joel Poinsett brought to the US from Mexico! 

Ola constructs a poinsettia out of construction paper!

Our classroom is beginning to look very festive...

The children continued to flex their creative muscles after listening to the story "The Night Before Christmas." The children were challenged to describe their house the night before their favorite holiday. They wrote about this holiday of their choice and described it in detail. They went on to draw a picture of what they would be dreaming about as their favorite holiday approached. These projects turned out so cute and are hanging in the hallway outside of our classroom.

We celebrated our star student, Filip, this week at school! Filip enjoyed sharing an experiment with his classmates that got them thinking about the mixing of colors. Using a clear glass of water placed inside a clear bowl of water, Filip used food coloring to show how the colors red and yellow mix to make orange. What a cool experiment! We just love having Filip in class with us this year! He is such an honest, sincere, good hearted, and hard working student! We enjoyed spending Friday afternoon with his mother and listening to Filip read Sneezy the Snowman to the class.

Some proud American citizens!

It was so great to meet with everyone to discuss the children's progress during our parent teacher conferences last week. The children are so fortunate to have such interested and supportive families! We jumped right back into the swing of things at school. The only difference this week was we had a new friendly face in our classroom! We welcome Jaimie to our classroom and look forward to getting to know her better!

Thank you for all of your hard work with the children on their landmark projects. It was so much fun to see them take ownership of their learning and teach their peers all that they had learned. The children's projects added a whole new dimension to our citizenship unit!

Once all of the presentations were complete, we invited Mrs. Coyle and Mrs. Glaser's first grade class to a "Landmark Fair" in our classroom. Our students set up their projects, and the first graders walked through our classroom and stopped to listen to new facts from us!

During reading this week, we read a nonfiction piece called "Meet the Super Croc." We learned how to summarize a text by only sharing the main ideas, as opposed to retelling the entire story.

In order to enhance our vocabularies, we started a program called "Text Talk" this week as well. The story that anchored our lessons this week was The Bad Case of Stripes.  Our new words included: remedies, distraction, contagious, perplexed, altered, and vanished. The children were encouraged to use these words in their everyday dialogue as much as they could, and we tallied points next to each word as each one was used. Did your child tell you who our "Word Winner" was? It was distraction! It was fun to see the children's wheels turning as they worked to incorporate these words into their vocabularies. They did a great job!

During math, our lessons in Geometry have begun. The children learned about what a "point" is, and practiced clearly labeling a series of points with capital letters. Next they learned about what a "line segment" is. They connected two points to create a line segment, and noticed that the line segment could continue on in either direction. They labeled their line segments using the name of both points.  We went on to look for parallel lines all around our classroom. The children found the ceiling tiles, mailboxes, bookshelves, mini blinds, and hundreds chart all contained parallel lines! We learned that parallel lines will never ever cross.  The children also worked to build up their strength of their addition facts through a series of mad minutes and some daily practice with xtramath.org. Thank you for helping review those addition facts a few minutes at home each night too! Its so helpful as we apply those facts during daily lessons.


Our unit on Citizenship has come to an end. We reviewed key concepts on Friday morning and the children took their unit assessment. Coming up, the children will be learning a little bit about holidays around the world during the month of December.


Finally, we had our first star student presentation this week! Mia did a terrific job sharing an experiment called "Air Rocket" with the class. She showed them how she was able to use air pressure to propel a balloon taped to a string attached to two chairs -across the classroom. We were so happy to spend some time on Friday afternoon with Mia's mom and dad, her older sister Elise, and her grandma and grandpa too! Mia is a sweet, sparkly girl and we are so happy to have her in our class!

That's all for now! Thank you so much for your interest in our learning at school!
Have a great weekend!