Our school is slowly but surely making its way towards Common Core. I have found myself really enjoying this transition (minus the countless trainings). It focuses a lot on writing which has always been my favorite subject.
This year my fellow second grade teacher and I have been planning Science and Social Studies in accordance with our reading series. This has provided us with little units each week. The students have been loving them!
One of the skills for second graders is learning how to research...Now, I am not quite ready to unleash my second graders wild on the internet, but I am ready to give them some safe opportunities to gather information and use that as their research.
Our first mini unit was on Space. The students had the opportunity to research their assigned planet using a SAFE website (kidastronomy.com) They were instructed to write down FIVE facts about their planet. The students each got a turn on the computer during our weekly ELA rotations. Students then met with the others who had the same planets, shared information and planned out their project.
The assignment? Convince us to live on your planet. The students had to create a poster and write a short paper. Sounds tough for second graders, but WOW! They BLEW me away! The students had some of the most interesting facts to share with their classmates.
One problem we encountered several times was not working nicely as a group...we modeled good group behavior, and surprisingly by the end of the project everyone was getting along fine!
The next research unit we completed was on Ellis Island and immigration to the United States...pretty tough stuff for second graders! We found an AMAZING webquest on TPT FOR FREEEEEE! that went along with a virtual field trip. We spent several days working our way through the Virtual Field Trip together with the interwrite board. During the "field trip" the students had to answer the webquest questions. This project could have been done independently by older grades, but working together worked fabulous for second grade. At the end of the unit my kiddos were EXPERTS on all things Ellis Island. They each wrote a story from the perspective of an immigrant, and oh my goodness I have never been prouder! They included such detail in their writing! One of my students (who usually HATES writing) wrote over three pages!!!
We are extremely lucky to not only have an entire computer lab we can visit, but also a set of ipads that can be checked out. Having these resources helps make researching in the classroom a little easier. I prefer using the computer because I am able to create a folder of the websites I want the students visiting, vs me telling them the site to type on the ipad.
