Jelly Bean Experiment

Today in Learning Agreement we conducted an experiment to answer the research question: Can you taste sweetness when your nose is blocked?
Louise helped to run the experiment. The children wrote their hypothesis and reason for the hypothesis before conducting the experiment. Here are the instructions about how to conduct the experiment so you can try it at home.
Step 1: Hold your nose
Step 2: Chew the jelly bean for 10 seconds
Step 3: Release your nose
Our results are displayed in the Neighbourhood. 

Writing a hypothesis 

Chewing the Jelly Bean while the nose is blocked

If you know any simple experiments we could try during learning agreement please share these with us. The experiments run best if we have a parent helper, so if you are able to come in on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday morning to assist we would appreciate the help. 

How do we research? We can read

Another way to research our wonderings is to read non-fiction texts written by experts. To deepen our understandings it is important to reflect upon what we already know about the topic before reading and write notes about what we have learnt as we go or straight afterwards. 
Over the coming weeks there will be a focus in our reading workshops and guided reading sessions on how to use a non-fiction text to answer our wonderings. Before reading we will record what we already know under the heading 'Knew'. As we read we will record new knowledge under the heading 'New'. This assists with identifying what you have learnt from reading the text. 

Home Learning: Children can create a Knew & New Chart in their readers notebook to complete when reading a non-fiction text. 

How do we research? We can conduct experiments!

To answer our wonderings we have become researchers. As part of our research we are learning about the many methods of research. One form of research that we are currently doing is conducting experiments. 

In Learning Agreement we have been conducting experiments to see the impact that smell has on taste. Before we took part in the experiments we wrote a hypothesis.  

The Nature group is conducting an experiment to answer the wondering: What do plants need to grow?

The Human Body group has been researching the wondering: Why do we fart?

As part of the research, an experiment was conducted to see what happens in the stomach before you fart. 

Come in and take a look at our (developing) experiment display at the front of the Neighbourhood. 

Week 7 Happenings!

Keep Bringing in Walkathon Money

Monday

Year 2 Running Club

Tuesday

Italian & PE (2A)

Art & Italian (2J)

PE & Art (2S)

Thursday

Art (2A)

Italian (2S)

PE (2J)
Singing with Deb

Library

Friday

3pm  Assembly 

Wellbeing in Year Two

In the year two neighbourhood we have started weekly wellbeing sessions called Circle Time which provide children with a safe and warm environment to speak about any feelings or issues that they would like to share within their home group context. We will be using it as an active teaching time for Social and Emotional Learning, along with our daily meditation after lunch. 

Circle time can be used to respond to specific issues that arise related to wellbeing in the playground or in the neighbourhood or it can take a focus where children are invited to speak about a particular topic such as:

I sometimes feel jealous because ......
I work best when ......
I feel happy when ......
I feel angry when .......
A goal I would like to achieve is ......
How do I feel when I put others down?
How do my friends feel if I put them down?

0. The Golden Rules of Circle Time
   These are the rules by which circle time will proceed most effectively. Ideally the pupils could make up their own rules although there are some rules which are sacrosanct. Such as:
   
• You can only talk when you are holding the talking stick (with
  younger children this should be a soft toy). At Key Stage 2 the talking
  stick could be a shell or other object of interest.
  
• Everybody listens when someone else is speaking
  
• Everybody has the chance to speak
  
• Always keep the circle shape
  
• Everyone has the right to pass
  
• Listen respectfully to what a person says
  
• Children may disagree with a statement but no one should be put
  down
  
• No statement or answer is wrong
  
• Nobody should be mentioned by name (it is not a “kangaroo court”)
  
• Children can only talk about their own issues, not someone else’s. 
  

In addition to these ongoing and embedded wellbeing times in our neighbourhood, we also respond to need by adding additional wellbeing workshops into our timetable.

This week, the children have had workshops around common problems that can occur (particularly rough play and exclusion) during familiar games in the playground such as tiggy, down ball, imaginative games, footy/soccer, etc. The children are working in small groups with others whom they might not normally play with to develop a creative expression of how to prevent issues during such games. Some children are creating an animation, others are developing plays and skits with storylines and narration, others are drawing comics and illustrations/posters. We will aim to post some of their creations on the blog in the near future.


If you would like to read more about Circle Time or The Smiling Mind Please visit

http://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/introducing_circle_time.pdf

http://smilingmind.com.au

Word Study in Year 2

The children have been going on suffix hunts this term, we have looked for and recorded words that end in 'er' and 'ed' already. We had lots of fun discussing and catergorising our 'er' words into lists where 'er' was a suffix or was part of the word before and looking at whether the 'er' suffix made the word a person (reader), a thing (computer) or means more (bigger). 

We are now looking for 'tion' at the end of words. If the children read words that end in 'tion' at home we encourage them to record these in their reader's notebooks to share with the Neighbourhood and record on our 'tion' wall. 

The children have been taking part in word study workshops this term that have been centred around using the spelling books (little black and yellow book) and learning individual spelling words.

The children are to record words that have been corrected in their writing into the spelling book. This is a process the children are learning to do. The spelling book can be used as a personal dictionary. The words listed are to be practised by the children in learning agreement in their word study book. This week the children were given a handout with some fun ideas about how to practise their spelling words. Below is the handout children received and stuck in their spelling books, the children are encouraged to practise at home too. 

Spelling Practice Ideas

Write a silly sentence with your spelling words, underline your spelling words and be careful to spell them correctly.

Order your spelling words in alphabetical order (A- Z) in your word study book.

Look up a spelling word in a thesaurus and find synonyms for the word, record your spelling word and its synonyms in your word study book.

Look for smaller words in your spelling words. Record in your word study book.

What suffixes can you add to your spelling words (- s, - er, - ed, - ing,

- tion). Record your spelling word (base word) and the words that can be made in your word study book.

Look, Cover, Write, Check. Look at your spelling word, cover (by shutting the book), write on a white board and check that you spelt it correctly.

Focus of our Inquiry

Hi everyone,

The focus of our Inquiry at the moment is deepening our wonderings, formulating research questions and exploring the many forms of research. From our initial wonderings the children categorised them into three main categories which have become our three research groups: Nature, Body/Sport/Health, and Space/Technology. 

The children put in their first and second preferences for the research group they would like to join based on their wonderings and interests. While it was impossible to give all children their first preference due to group sizes, the children all seem very happy with their project group.

Our research group workshops are currently focused around classifying the children's wonderings into:

• Research questions that are closed answer questions, there is a simple answer that can be found through research i.e. How many species of spider are there? Which planet in our solar system is the hottest?)
• Research questions that require us to read and learn new information, it is not just a simple answer but rather we may need to learn about systems, processes i.e. How does carbon dioxide hurt the earth? Why are some animals cannibals? How do glow worms glow?
• Research questions that are open, don't have a defined answer and you may need to develop your own opinion and justify it yourself. i.e. What will nature's future be like? Do animals understand people? Do animals have feelings?

After working through what we already know about our wonderings as a collective group, we plan on engaging in many experiences to develop our content knowledge based on our research questions, as well as be inspired to think broadly and deepen our wonderings to those questions that are open and that we can have our own opinions about. We hope to develop research techniques beyond the GOOGLE search. How can we use experiments, observations, surveys, interviews, etc. to develop our opinions and justify them? We will present our learning in creative ways depending on the direction that our Inquiry takes. 


THE BIG IDEAS:

Big Understandings for the children:

“Some wonderings don’t need an answer, some wonderings are easy to find the answer to, some wonderings require us to think for ourselves and justify our own opinion”

“I can have my own opinion and give reasons why with some evidence”

“People can have different opinions to me”

TEACHER RESEARCH QUESTIONS

How do 7- 8 year olds learn about the world?

WHY do children of this age wonder about certain things?

How do we want them to learn about the world? (Thinking processes)

• Research techniques (bias, multiple sources of information, validating information)
• Questioning strategies (interviews, debates)
• Justifying their own opinions 
• Critical thinking – thinking routines (Harvard)
• Differences in Opinion are not personal – it is ok to have a different opinion to those around you.

Our Writing Focus:

·       Writing good research questions: open/closed

·       Summarising key ideas from research

·       Writing notes from text during research

Our Reading Focus:

·       Identifying sources of information to help us answer research questions

·       Reading a text and identifying key words

·       Identifying key information in a text to answer parts of a research question

·     Using contents page, index, glossary to find information efficiently

Our Maths Focus:

·        Part-Part-Whole model: which part of a problem is missing and what operation do we need to do to solve it?

·        Writing number sentences to match worded stories (for equal groups, addition and subtraction and money)

·        Place Value (renaming 10 ones for 1 ten, 10 tens for 1 hundred, 10 hundreds for 1 thousand)

Word Study/Spelling Focus: 

Suffix: 'tion' and recapping suffixes 'ed' and 'er'

Onset and Rime 

Practising our spelling words using different strategies (see spelling blog post).