Kattre's Korner
Learning together. Growing together.
As Spring Break has hit, us teachers begin to feel the pressure of the school year winding down and summer approaching. The greatest thing about that feeling this year, is knowing how positive and enthusiastic my second graders are! As I panic to wonder how I will get all of the lessons in, these seven and eight-year-olds are the calm to my storm. I say "bar graphs", they say "AWESOME". I say "Let's set goals", they say "WE CAN'T WAIT!" I am so proud to have a class that works so well together and always tries their hardest to be their best! Below are pictures of our new personal goal thermometers. I told you all last week how we set a classroom goal to earn 900 food packets, which saves 4 lives. Now they are each keeping track of their own Power Points, which we will decide soon how to use. Each week they will fill in how many they have earned, which they seem pretty excited about. In math, we have been learning about data collection and analysis. We have explored tally charts, picture graphs, and bar graphs. On Thursday, the students got to work with a partner to create their own surveys. They came up with the question they would ask 10 classmates, what the options would be to choose from, and filled in the bar graph accordingly. To complete the lesson and see what information they gathered from their survey, they created questions to analyze the graph, and then answered those questions and shared with the class. A big part of the partnership was that both people in the team shared the duties of asking the question/recording the data. Everyone was involved in the process and they worked so well together and should be proud of themselves for their hard work and patience! Great job Krew! The last thing I wanted to share with you all is that I've been trying to tie in opportunities to learn throughout our entire UNICEF bracelet journey. On Friday, we saw where we were on our food packet goal thermometer (450 food packets), and that we needed 75 more packets in the last week in order to add the next section to the chart. Cole did a great job of showing his classmates how to add 450+75 in order to find out at least how many food packets we needed to have in order to add that next section. We found out that we needed 525 food packets, and with 538 actual packets earned, we were able to put on the next step!! If you get a moment to congratulate your child on their hard work, perseverance, and determination, please do that. They SO SO deserve it!
Have a great break, everyone!!
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I've noticed lately that our bracelets have started to fizzle out and not have as much excitement as they used to. To try and counteract that today, we talked about why we are taking steps. What the steps are doing for ourselves, and for others across the planet. Then we also talked about how important it is to each a nutrient-filled breakfast each morning. How IRON helps our bodies and brains, and that the food packets we are taking steps to earn are FILLED with iron and other nutrition. To show them exactly what iron is, and where it can be found, we did a little experiment. We used a few different brands of cereals to try to figure out which one was the healthiest, and the best food for our brains and bodies. A healthy cereal (and breakfast in general) should contain iron to help give us energy, increase red blood cell counts to fight infection, and to feed our brains! We compared Fruit Loops (25% iron), Honey Nut Cheerios (25% iron), and Total - Whole Grain (100% iron) to see which we could prove was the healthiest. When we placed a flake of Total cereal in water and placed a strong magnet near it, the flake was ATTRACTED (notice the punny title of this post) to the magnet and moved towards the magnet!! That wasn't enough proof for these 2nd graders, though. Next, we let a cup of three types of cereals soak in a gallon bag of warm water for 15 minutes. After the time was up, can you guess which cereals looked pretty much the same, and which one was nearly completely broken up? (We wondered as a class how that must take a long time to break down in our bellies, then.) I placed a magnet under the bag and swirled it around for 20 seconds, then tipped the bag up, and slid the magnet above the 'soup' mixture. To our amazement, there was BLACK IRON that came up from the muck and PROVED that this cereal was full of iron to fuel our growing, learning bodies. I'll leave you to ask your kids how the Cheerios and Fruit Loops reacted ;) If you look closely at the picture of Ireland, you can see the iron (black) above the liquid that we pulled out with the magnet. Something else that was exciting for the kids this week was when they went to Mrs. Droessler's room for science. They are learning about plants and insects, and this week the shipment of worms came in. They are LOVING their time to hang out the Mrs. Droessler, learn new things about science, and hold worms!!! Check out these scientists!! They are having so much fun!! Going back to UNICEF bracelets, and reigniting their passion for taking steps... I decided to inspire them more by rewarding them for the impact they are having on the lives of others. We came up with a goal to earn 900 food packets by the end of the school year. That means we will have saved the lives of 30 children!! As of today, we are at 501 packets, so we are over half way there!! We talked about what we would like to earn for ourselves for working so hard and being empathic towards others, and the kids decided that a pizza and karaoke party is what they wanted to earn. I will be sending forms home soon to gain permission for substituting lunch one day near the end of school if (when) they reach their goal. Please don't hesitate to let me know if you feel uncomfortable with this. They would still be invited to Kattre Kafe to eat their own lunch while everyone else eats pizza. Here's the goal chart that I made this week to help the kids stay motivated. Each 75 packets the kids earn, we will put a new sliver of red on the chart. We are close to puttin on another next week! We have about 12 weeks of school left, so as long as they get a sliver of red every 2 weeks, we are GOLDEN! It would be great to even reach 1000! The last thing I want to mention is that we are learning about being a good citizen in social studies. We've talked about the three types of communities (urban, suburban, and rural) and all the things that good citizens do in those communities. We've talked about how we should follow rules and stay safe, how we can motivate others, and help others in our community. In an effort to show empathy, compassion, and explore the community around us, we were thinking of having a small food drive to collect food and take to a local food pantry. I've gotten the o.k. from Mrs. Reuter to even take a quick field trip to deliver the goods we will collect to a food pantry in town. There will be a note coming home shortly with more details, but I wanted to give you a heads up so that if you have any nonperishable items you would like to donate to our food drive, then you could maybe set the aside for our collection. Maybe as "homework" the kids will have to do a little "spring cleaning" of your pantry and they might find things that they could add to the food drive. Please stay tuned!! Have a great weekend!
~Mrs. Kattre To celebrate Dr. Seuss and his birthday, we had a 'Read In' day. Everyone got to wear their pajamas to school and we spent an hour reading Dr. Seuss books to ourselves and our friends. We also did some Dr. Seuss related activities to help learn more about the impact he made on books today. Friday, for our Bucketfilling assembly, everyone got to dress up as Dr. Seuss or their favorite character from one of his books. That's a cute bunch of kids, right there!
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Mrs. KattreI'm a 7th year teacher, with a family of three. Join me on this journey as we learn together and grow together. Archives
October 2019
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