Collect 50 Cents Class Championship Playoff Superstar Style

One of the things we love the most about our Investigations math resource is the fact that we learn many of our math concepts though games.  This gives the students an authentic reason to learn the content.  While we enjoy all the games, the Collect Coins series is a classroom favorite.  We first learned Collect 25 Cents and recently learned Collect 50 Cents.  

After we have played the game for awhile, we have started the tradition of having class championship playoffs. This started as a suggestion from one of our students, Alex, who is a self proclaimed sports fanatic.  Since I did not have much background in structuring play off championships, I searched the internet to find a resource that would allow me to build playoff brackets.  I found the resources at PrintYourBrackets.com very user friendly for those of more sport challenged individuals.

Here is what our class bracket looked like from our last championship:

During our last championship, we may have set the bar high for future playoffs.  I wish I could take credit for any of this, but absolutely none of the ideas came from me nor did I have any input in the content.  Students created these on the fly.  I just knew I had to document what they were doing and grabbed the iPad.  

We had an announcer

A Commercial

A Halftime Show

Post Game Interviews 

Learning from our Twitter Friends

We recently read the book Recess at 20 Below by Ciny Lou Aillaud.  As we read the book, we merged the experiences of the students from the story with our experiences and tracked our thinking.  We realized we had many questions.  Some of them were answered by further reading of the text, but many of our questions went beyond the text.  

As we were reading the text, Mrs. Haney remembered a teacher she had met on Twitter during one of the live chats she participates in (#2ndgradechat.) Ms. Nairn and her students live in Canada where the temperatures had recently dipped down to -51 degrees Celsius with the windchill (-59 degrees Fahrenheit)

We contacted Ms. Nairn's class through Twitter and they agreed to Skype with us to answer some of our questions about what it was like to have recess when it was so cold outside.  

During our Skype session, they showed us what their playground looked like. It was covered with so much snow that the swings rested on top of the snow. They talked about what it was like to build snow forts and play soccer on the snow.  We also learned about the clothing they wear during the winter.  They did think it was funny when we told them we were not allowed to go outside if the temperature fell below 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius.)

We are so lucky to learn in a district that encourages us to reach out to others beyond our classroom walls.  Being able to tweet and skype with our learning friends has proven to be highly engaging and enables us to explore concepts at a deeper level.  

Communities PBL

How can we, as community planners, design and construct one of the three types of communities that will meet the needs of the people who will live there?


This was the question that launched our studies of communities.  We had many questions:  

• What were the three types of communities?
• What is a community?
• What do people need from their community?
• What needs to be in our community?
• What kind of community should we build?

During our learning we found the answers to these questions, and found we had many more questions.  Below are pictures of our completed project.  Special thanks to our Twitter learning friends.  As our communities were under construction, we tweeted out pictures and they gave us feedback.  

Urban

Suburban

Rural

Pictures of the construction process:

Primary Blogging Community Round 2

Our class is participating in the Primary Blogging Community again for the spring semester. This time we will partner with classes in Italy, Canada, and Hong Kong!  During the first few weeks, we will visit our classroom blogs to learn more about each other.   Below is some information we wanted to share with our new friends. 

 Dear Blogging Friends,

We are second grade students who learn together in Carrollton, TX. 

Our school is Polser Elementary which is in the Lewisville Independent School District.  

We created a Google Map and put a pin to show where we are located.  As we connect with other classrooms through our blogs, we invite them to add their information to our map.  Click on the link, zoom out, and add your pin to our map so we can see where you are.  

Here is a link to a video that shows what learning looks like in our classroom.

Here are some of our favorite blog posts that show some of our learning:


Do you like solving riddles? Check out our coin riddles
Learn more about Carrollton through our goods and services blog post.  
See how we learned more about natural resources and how they help us.


We are excited to learn with you this semester!

Your learning friends,

The Second Grade Superstars

Coin Riddles

As we have been learning how to count collections of coins less than $1.00 we have been having a great time solving riddles.  Today, we decided to to try writing our own riddles.  We tweeted some of our riddles out to our learning friends.  We were very impressed with Mrs. McGuire's Firsties (@1stgradebears) who were able to solve the riddles and tweet the correct answers back to us.  Way to go!

Here are some of our creations: