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:

Frosty's Challenge #4: Learning to Code

Frosty left us with the following challenge and left a QR code for us to scan.  

It took us to the following video from President Obama!

  

President Obama challenged us to learn how to write computer code.  Frosty left instructions with Mrs. Haney to show us a short project he created using the Hopscotch app.  He made a monkey move across the stage (screen in "code talk") and then when we clapped our hands the monkey grew bigger. (Mrs. Haney said that was because the monkey was getting a big ego from all our clapping.) 

We were impressed--all this from an elf who doesn't have opposable thumbs!   

After a short tutorial, we spent time learning to write code to make avatars move across a screen.  

It isn't every day that a class has an elf friend who has President Obama challenge them to learn to code.  Can't wait to see what Frosty has in store for us next !

A Month of Learning With Frosty

This month, we have a special learning friend visiting our class.  Hover over the image below and click one of the targets.  We got started a couple of days late, but we are excited about our new guest.  Check back each day to see what we have learned.

Goods and Services Around Carrollton, TX

As we continue our study of economics, we will be discussing how work provides income to purchase goods and services and the choices people can make about spending money in the U.S. free enterprise system.

During the week of Thanksgiving, student families partnered with us to ensure that our studies could be meaningful and relevant to each student.  Many parents snapped pictures for us as they went around our town making purchases with their students.  We are discussing the purchases we made at each location and discussing if our purchases were goods or services.  Below is a slide presentation of some of the places students visited.  Later this week, students will explore the app Telligami to tell us more about the many choices we have to spend income in our city.

A special thank you everyone who submitted pictures!  
Mrs. Haney

Here are some of our videos:

From Start to Finish

Have you ever wondered how something is made?  

Where do we get the resources to make all the things we use every day?  

These were two questions that helped launch a unit of study as we traced the development of a product from a natural resource to a finished product. 

We began with an open sort of items and students were asked to sort them in any way that they thought would make sense.  We learned there was one secret way to sort the times.  

The different ways we sorted

Things we use and Trash

Things that are not flexible and Things that are flexible

Plants and Not Plant

Things you find inside and Things you find outside

One group guess the secret sort:

Things that are made by man and Things that are made by nature

Each group took a picture of their sort using our classroom iPad and then shared it with the class using AirServe to explain their thinking. 

Then we went on a walk around our school to find more examples of natural resources.  We took pictures of what we found using our classroom iPad.  We also read a passage from our social studies textbooks and viewed a video about natural resources to get more information.

Next, some students were given a clip art picture of a natural resource and a man made product and mixed around the room, using a Kagan cooperative learning strategy.  Students had to find their partner by matching the natural resource to the man-made product. As groups found each other, they were given a corresponding book from the start to finish series that explained how the product is made from the natural resource.  

After having time to explore each of the different books in the series, students broke themselves into groups and three and each group selected one of the books they would like to explore further.  

Groups read the book and discussed the process.  They then made a Flow Map (Thinking Maps) to trace the development of a product from a natural resource to a finished product. 

Because we wanted to share our learning with others, each group also created a short video to explain the process using Educreations.  We were inspired byt the book Tomorrow's Alphabet as we created our titles.  We added a QR code to our maps and sent an email out to our campus inviting students to view our work.  

 We also learned how to use the i-nigma app to scan other groups QR code to view their videos.

This unit addressed the following enduring understandings:

People depend on their physical environment, including natural resources, to satisfy their basic needs.

All goods begin with natural resources.

Below are the Educreations projects we made: