Look At All That GRIT!

This month, our class showed some outstanding GRIT! Students showed Guts by working hard to take risks in learning, they showed Resilience when they kept trying and didn't give up, showed Innovation by being creative and thoughtful in their studies, and worked fabulously together to show Teamwork. 

Well done everyone! Enjoy your break!

Sincerely,
Mr. Kilham

Banana experiment results

The results are in! Number 2, the banana in the plastic bag, stayed the freshest! Number 4 (refrigerator) and 1 (on my desk) were the least fresh, and number 3 (wrapped in tin foil) was somewhere in-between. On Friday, we added a 5th banana to our experiment and put it in the freezer. Once it thawed it was mush! 

We made some excellent observations and came to a good conclusion about our hypothesis. Great work scientists!

Sincerely,

Mr. Kilham

Let's Learn About Maps

How can maps help us understand our world?

Hello friends!

Now that our government studies and banana science is wrapped up, we are moving on to maps! In our next unit, we will be learning all about land forms, bodies of water, and different features of maps and globes. Before we start, I want to hear what you already know! Please share something you know about maps on the padlet below.

Created with Padlet

Some of the Social Studies standards addressed in this unit:

2.1 On a map of the world, locate all of the continents

2.3 Locate the oceans of the world

2.4 Locate the five major rivers in the world

2.5 Locate major mountains or mountain ranges in the world

G.R.I.T. Feathers

As you may have heard, we have been earning headband feathers this month to highlight acts of GRIT. We learned that in some Native American tribes, feathers were given to individuals who performed good deeds for their community. In our second grade classroom, students have been earning feathers for demonstrating Guts, Resilience, Innovation, and Teamwork.

It has been wonderful to see our students taking so much pride in their hard work and applauding the efforts of their classmates. You can encourage your child to show GRIT by coming up with different ways to show Guts, Resilience, Innovation, and Teamwork in our classroom each day. The way our class has been working, I'm thinking we'll all have earned the four GRIT feathers in no time :)

Sincerely,

Mr. Kilham

The Great Banana Experiment!

How do good scientists answer a question?

This week, we began discussing the scientific method. We learned all about how good scientists observe the world and come up with a question they would like to answer. With this question in mind, the scientist will make a hypothesis (or predict an answer to their question). 

Now, the fun part! 

Good scientists create an experiment to test their hypothesis and try to answer their question. They make lots of observations during the experiment, collecting data to help decide if their hypothesis was correct. In the end, they use the data to come to a conclusion and try to answer their question.

And of course, you share what you've learned!

For our first experiment, we are attempting to answer the question "How can I keep a banana fresh?" For our experiment, we are trying four different methods to keep our bananas fresh:

#1 is sitting on Mr. Kilham's desk - (our control: we don't do anything so we have something to compare the other bananas to)

#2  is sealed in a Ziploc bag

#3 is wrapped in foil

#4 is stored in the refrigerator

We will keep watch, record our observations, and hopefully reach a conclusion!

Sincerely,
Mr. Kilham

Veteran's Day Song

Hello families!
We have been discussing Veteran's Day here at Steward and why it is important to acknowledge and pay our respects to our country's veterans. Each year we have an assembly where we honor veterans past and present, near and far. This year, 2nd and 3rd graders will be contributing to the assembly by singing a song. We have practiced as a grade and in the classroom, but if you would like to practice at home as well I have posted a link to the nicertube video that includes the lyrics.
Veterans Day Song
Thank you! Mr. Kilham

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone had an excellent Halloween this weekend! We had a blast on Friday during our classroom's Halloween party. Thank you again to our room parents for organizing the event, to the parent volunteers who were able to come in and help out, and to the parents who sent in refreshments for the party. The kids' costumes looked great!

 

Sincerely,

Mr. Kilham