Time Flies

Wow!  I can't believe how long it has been since I last updated - time is certainly flying here in second grade!  For the last few weeks we have been fully immersed in our drama unit with Kelli.

We began as  members of a TV show audience - a TV show called The Perfect City Show.  It was hosted by Ms. Savvy Traveler and featured her going from city to city looking for a perfect city.  We quickly realized, though, that NO city is perfect - but many cities work hard to fix their problems.  We wrote a theme song for our new show - The Nice City Show.

We're here at The Nice City Show

And we know where to go.

Every city has problems

But do they know how to solve them?

Every city has problems

But do they have people to solve them?

We're about to find out

What it's all about 

On The Nice, Nice, Nice, Nice Nice City Show

(2, 3) City Show

(2, 3) City Show

(2, 3) The Nice City Show!

We then went undercover as city government workers.  We had workers at the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Health, the Department of Animal Care and Control, and the Commission for Women's Issues.  As you saw in the last post, we answered phones and helped people around the city.

We then noticed that a lot of phone calls were coming in from Brooklyn - specifically from the area around Bruce Ratner's proposed Atlantic Yards project.  Mr. Ratner is currently building a basketball stadium for the Brooklyn Nets and had promised the community lots of jobs, affordable homes, and greenspace.  After tearing down people's homes and businesses, though, he decided to put in a 1,000 car parking lot.  Obviously, people were upset!

We did some research and decided that Bruce Ratner's plan didn't meet the needs of the community - and as city government workers, that's our job!  We created our own plan that met the needs of the community.  Each department planned, designed, and built different things to put onto a model of our plan.

Students listed ideas as a department and then began mapping out their plan.

Students then began building their ideas to put onto the model.

As each department worked, they continued to receive phone calls with comments and complaints in Brooklyn.  The government workers used those ideas to create their plans for what to build.  Some plans for each department were:

Health Department:  Urgent Care Hospital, trash cans, green carts for fresh snacks, exercise equipment, running track

Parks and Recreation:  Green space, sprinkler park, swimming pool, playground, trees, gardens, benches, public restrooms

Animal Care and Control:  trash cans, dog run, vet/pet supply store, green space, pond (for wild animals), trees

Commission for Women's Issues:  Low income housing, stroller parking at the stadium, storefronts (including the above pet supply store) with jobs for women and training for women, education center for women and their families

Department of Transportation:  Underground subway station below the stadium, bike parking lot, wide sidewalks, nearby bus stops, safety signs, small 5-level parking garage

All of these ideas took into consideration the needs and wants of the surrounding community while also meeting the goals for their departments.  Students then wrote speeches to deliver at Bruce Ratner's Public Forum.  At the forum they immediately raised their hands to speak at the microphone after Mr. Ratner declared that his idea was what was best for Brooklyn.  As the students took the stage, the audience quickly was on their side.  They spoke of the noise, the traffic, the pollution, and the safety problems that a 1,000 car parking lot in residential Brooklyn would bring.  The students then showed off their completed model.

On the left are the swimming pools and sprinkler parks created by the Department of Parks and Recreation.
On the right are three buildings built by the Commission for Women's Issues - notice that all three utilize the roofs for garden space, playground space, or pet space.
On the far right you can see 2 buses pulling up to the bus stop built by the Department of Transportation.

The Department of Transportation built a subway station underneath the stadium to create a better environment in Brooklyn.  On the left you can also see bike parking and a small parking garage for those basketball fans that must drive.

The departments also had to work together to create a key for many of the commonly needed items on the model.

The fully completed model -- the new plan is entitled "The Pretty Skies Park"

After the students presented the model, Mr. Ratner called for a vote - and our plan won!  Hopefully, in the future, the voices of the citizens will be taken into account before homes are destroyed and plans are made.

Busy, busy, busy!

The last six weeks of school always seem to be the busiest - and this year is no different.

An empty office at the Department of Parks and Recreation.

- We have been role-playing with Kelli as city department workers - and going out into our own communities to find evidence of city departments at work.  We will even have some government workers come in to talk to us and answer our questions.
- We have been growing lots of new plants!  We now have cuttings from ivy plants growing on our windowsill as well as wheat growing inside of straws!
- We visited the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens on Tuesday and explored some of the thousands of plants in the gardens - we smelled them, touched them, looked at them - it was a great experience.

- We have been using clocks to explore elapsed time and creating timelines of events.
- We are currently writing play scripts based on Leo Leonni books we read independently.  We wrote a class play script about Leo Leonni's book Swimmy and acted it out too!
- We are reading more and more challenging chapter books and really growing as readers as we notice lots of new things as we read.
- Today we are having a visitor come to speak to us about Kenya - the country where our pen pals live.

...Whew!  And that's only some of the great things we're doing in second grade!  As the year winds down, though, we will need some time to reflect back on our year.  I'll be posting the students' reflections here as we work on them.

Harvesting

Our brassica plants are no more - they have withered and died.  They won't however be gone for long.  On Monday, we harvested seed pods from our plants.  These seed pods held anywhere between 2 and 9 seeds!  After harvesting the seeds, we will be passing them on to the other EVCS 2nd grade class.  There, they will begin growing their own brassica plants - but using our seeds!  The life cycle of our plants is now complete.

A hodgepodge

I feel like there is so much going on that I can't choose just one topic to focus on!

Firstly, we are really immersing ourselves in plants!  We now have a whole collection of carnivorous plants (thanks to a great parent!) and we are exploring them first-hand now that we've done so much research on them.

We also have grass growing on the window ledge.  We will be "mowing" it next week to see how plants grow.

Our brassica plants may be wilting and dying - but the seed pods are now forming!  Next week we can plant our new seeds to start new plants!

In non-plant related news, yesterday was our last Cook Shop lesson.  We celebrated the end of this excellent program by making a recipe that used all 5 food groups.  Can you spot them all on our ingredients table?


A few kids asked for the recipe so here it is:

- 2 cans black beans, drained
- 1 head lettuce, washed and cut into strips
- 2 apples, diced into small pieces
- 1 red pepper, diced into small pieces
- 1 bag of low-fat shredded mozzarella cheese
- 8 whole wheat tortillas
- 1 tsp. chili powder
- 1 tsp. cumin seeds


Mash the beans and mix in the chili powder and cumin seeds.  Then spread it on the tortilla.  Sprinkle on the cheese.  Then add the apples and peppers.  Next top it with lettuce.  Roll up the tortilla and eat.  Can be served with salsa or low-fat Greek yogurt.


We also began our drama residency with Kelli yesterday.  We have immersed ourselves into the world of TV journalism to find out about how New York City runs.  Tomorrow we will be going on a community walk to search for evidence of City Government Agencies.  Stay tuned for lots more from this amazing project!

And finally...in math we left the Land of Inch and met a new king in an unnamed kingdom.  This ruler of the land measured everything with his foot.  But when he gave measurements to his carpenter for a new stall for his daughter's horse, it could only fit a pony!  We figured out it was because the carpenter's foot was much smaller than the king's foot!  We wrote letters to the king explaining that because the measurement tool wasn't standard in size, none of his buildings would be either.  The carpenter cut a piece of wood that was the same size as the king's foot to use to measure with before she cut or built anything.  She called  this standard-sized measuring tool a "Ruler" in honor of the king.  We are now using rulers to measure in class.  ....They sure are similar to our 12-inch-brick measuring tool, though!

Pollinate!

On Monday we became little worker bees here in room 205 - we pollinated our flowers!

Last week and this week, we've been discussing how plants make new plants.  We all knew that you start with a seed - but what we weren't sure about was where seeds come from.

After some reading, some looking at plants, and a short video, we determined that seeds come from the same place where flowers had been growing.  A cherry tree with lots of flowers would be a great thing for a cherry farmer, even though he or she didn't sell flowers!

We then learned that the pollen from one flower has to be put onto another flower.  Flowers attract bugs (like bees!) and butterflies and hummingbirds to them by being pretty in color or having good smelling nectar.  How nice a flower looks and smells isn't just aesthetic - it's also useful.  We also discussed that pollen can stick to a curious dog's nose or to our clothes as we walk and we sometimes - accidentally - help pollinate flowers too.

We then collected the pollen from our flowers using Q-tips to get deep in.  We saw the yellow, dusty pollen on the tips.  Then we pollinated a friend's flower.  Now we wait - hopefully we'll have seeds to replant soon!

Of course, after working with our plants, we recorded any observations we have had.  Our recording packets are filling up with pictures, words, and numbers showing how our plants have changed.

Blooming!

While almost half of our class is home sick, our flowers are doing quite well!  Our brassica seeds began to grow buds last week and now are almost all blooming!  It's only been 2 1/2 weeks, but they're growing, growing, growing!

On Monday we will begin doing the job of bumble bees -- we will pollinate these flowers to help them grow seeds to reproduce!

The Land of Inch

The Land of Inch can only be visited very late at night by pressing on the castle's door.
Our teacher, Liz, has visited once to get our new measuring tools from Princess Funer.

The Land of Inch is far, far away.  In this miniature land, there is a beautiful (and brilliant) princess who lives in a castle with her father, the king.  One day, the king asked that all of the athletes in the land see who could jump the farthest.  Unfortunately, all of the athletes measured their jumps with different units.  Some measured using blocks, others with sticks, some with their feet, and others with pieces of paper.  No one knew who won because they couldn't compare the distances!

Then Princess Funer noticed a pile of bricks by the castle door.  She had all of the athletes jump again and they all measured their jumps with bricks.  They could now see who the winner was because they were using a standard measuring tool.

The people of the Land of Inch loved this and started carrying bricks with them all of the time to help them measure things.  Soon, though, they realized that bricks are heavy and lots of people were complaining of aching backs.  So, Princess Funer decided to trace the bricks on paper and give out pieces of paper that were the same size as bricks - but were a lot lighter to carry.  She called these papers "Inch Bricks" because they lived in the Land of Inch.

We used Inch Bricks yesterday to measure the long jumps.  One miniature jumper had a jump as long as a pencil.  Another had a jump as long as a sheet of paper.  Yet another jumper had a jump as long as our pencil bins.  The fourth jumper had a jump as long as the width of a sheet of paper.  We used Inch Bricks to see who won.

One student, though, voiced a complaint.  He said using Inch Bricks was difficult because you had to be careful not to overlap bricks or leave spaces between bricks and you had to be sure they were exactly straight to get the right measurement.  We brought this complaint to Princess Funer and she used magical glue to create Inch Brick Measuring Tools.  She glued 12 of the Inch Bricks together in a straight row so that it was easier to measure.

Today we used that Inch Brick Measuring Tool to measure the sizes of clothing the king and his subjects wear.  We also compared them - how much shorter is Kip's jacket compared to the king's robe?  What about Nap's sweater compared to Kag's knee socks?

Tomorrow we will help the king measure his gardens.  They're quite big -- bigger than our Inch Brick Measuring Tools.  We'll have to come up with a solution for that problem.

On Friday we will be using our Inch Brick Measuring Tools to create accurate maps of the Land of Inch.  Stop by the hallway outside of room 205 to see what we're doing to help the Land of Inch!