Second Grade Structures

This morning we visited Mrs. Zoll's classroom so that we could see the structures that they created after their Global Structure Inquiry. 

Thank you for sharing your structures with us, Second Graders!

Drawing with Scissors Like Matisse

We studied the life and art of Henri Matisse.  We read two books about him called Drawing with Scissors and Henri's Scissors.

Of course, the first question was, "How can you draw with scissors?!?"  We read the book and looked at his art with this question in mind.

Matisse started out as a painter and painted things so they looked real.

Soon, Matisse painted with more imagination.  He used brighter colors and bigger brushstrokes.

Some people who saw his art like this said that his paintings looked like "wild beasts" had painted them.  

As Matisse got older, he was often sick.  He had to stay in bed a lot and couldn't stand up for very long to paint.  So he started cutting out paper shapes and called it "drawing with scissors."  Here is a picture of Matisse cutting out his shapes!

Here are some of our favorite Matisse cutouts.

La Gerbe

The Snail

Icarus

We decided to give it a go and create our own Matisse-inspired cutouts.

Join us at the Exploration Celebration on April 16th to see our finished Matisse-inspired artwork!

Coalescing Our Animal Research

With the Exploration Celebration right around the corner, it was time to start coalescing our research.  During this stage, we group similar facts from our post-it notes that go together. It leads to some great conversations as they work!

Then, we label each group of post-it facts with the "Big Idea."

We are so proud of our research!

Next up...creating our life-sized animals!

Are Zoos Good or Bad?

At the end of our animal inquiry, we got into a discussion about zoos.
We know Jane Goodall from our fall research, and responded to this question in our morning message:

Most predicted that Jane Goodall would like zoos because people love to learn about wild animals. Those that thought she wouldn't like zoos thought Jane wouldn't like to see animals in cages.

Then we watched a few videos.  One listed the pros and cons of zoos, one tried to convince us that zoos are bad, and another tried to convince us that zoos are good.

  

We found our ideas changing with each video we saw!  Some agreed that zoos were helpful, some thought animals were better off in their own habitats, and some had a mixture of opinions.  We got together with partners and discussed our feelings and opinions.

Next we shared our ideas with the group, and finally we took some private time and wrote about our opinions about zoos.

Last, we watched part of this video to see what Jane Goodall really thinks about zoos.

Investigating in our Animal Research Clubs

We have been having a great time finding lots of new facts about our animals in our research clubs. 

We have been focusing our research a bit more to make sure we understand the big ideas about our animals.  Here is a sheet that we have been using to guide our search for information:

One of our favorites is when we find numbers and can use the numbers to measure out our animals.  

In the picture below, Lincoln is measuring out a big cat....and it blows Peyton's mind!

March Learning Mural

The school year is going by much too quickly--it's already Learning Mural Day, again! 
This month our learning mural paper is pretty short, as we didn't have very many school days in March.  We were a little nervous at being able to fit everything on it.

Here is our brainstorming for our learning during the month of March:

Not too bad for only 16 days of learning!
Next, we collaborated to create representations of our learning.

Here is the finished learning mural for March:

Lately we have enjoyed looking back at all of our learning murals and reminiscing about our year in first grade together!