Interrupting Chicken

     Welcome to our new crew of students!  We are so glad you are joining us and that our 2nd/3rd grade combination class is up and running!  They jumped right in today and did a fantastic job!

     With our new combined class, we will be doing joint activities for most of the day but with some solo time for each grade level while the other is in related arts.
     

     Second graders spent our solo time together getting acclimated to classroom and being introduced to some ALERT staples: The Nerds, Habits of Mind, and Renzulli Learning.  We also were introduced to our year long theme of Systems.  Click each link to learn more.

Using the nerds and the elements of creativity for our binder design.

     Third grade spent their solo time with some brain stretching deductive reasoning puzzles-my favorite!  Try your hand at these!

Sports Logic Puzzle

Pet Mix-Up Puzzle

     This week we spent our time together taking a closer look one of our Habits of Mind.  First we read the book Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein and discussed it as a non-example of managing impulsivity, thinking before acting, and using your brain to manage your body.  Students then created their our Interrupting ___________ stories and presented them to the class.  I'll tell you, we have quite the creative crew!

An Eye for Details

     Our time was short today, but we made the most of it!  Students witnessed a theft in our own classroom and used what we learned about composite sketches to make a drawing of the perpetrator. We then looked at some online activities testing their powers of observation and helping them match the suspect with the crime.  Try them for yourself!

Art of Crime Detection

Perp Walk

Face Memory

The thief

Forensic Artists at work

     We also prepared for our field study by looking at the trip packet, setting expectations, and talking about different types of evidence and how they are collected.  Students learned the process of crime scene investigation and Locard's Principal that says that criminals always take a trace of something with them and leave a trace of something behind.  I hope the same applies to our classroom and the students took something valuable from class today!

Line Plots, Eye Witnesses Accounts, and the Case of the Sugar Shaker

     This week our CSI focus has been on questioning and eye witness accounts.  Students participated in various activities geared toward understanding quality questions in interrogation, the often unreliable nature of eye witness testimony, and the power of close observation.  

Using questioning to guess our mystery tool.

     In math we worked on creating line plots with data and using the graph to find the median, mode, and range of the set.

Plotting data.

     We also took a pre-assessment on forensic science and used last week's fingerprint evidence to compare with our suspect samples and determine the prankster that switched our sugar for salt.

Examining prints.

     Finally we tried our hand at both word and figual analogies and looked for relationships between ideas.
Try this one for yourself:  tornado : scary :: ALERT: _________
A. boring
B. dull
C. green
D. FUN!