Look what I have on my bench… 
I think I will try out Jake’s Banana Bread recipe… it didn’t make it into all the books so here’s a copy:
It turned out really great:
Has anyone else tried a recipe out of our cookbook? I would love to hear which recipes work well…
We are continuing to explore different and efficient strategies for solving addition number sentences.
In Year Two it is important that students have automatic recall of “ten facts”. On Friday students were given 60 ten facts to solve and 2 minutes on the stopwatch. One student solved all 60 in less then the 2 minutes and our lowest score was 11. Some of you might like to take this challenge at home: 60 ten facts in two minutes (or less).
We have been practicing adding 10 to any 2-digit number (without the need for fingers).
To help visualise this strategy we used a number chart. Splat number is a fun way to do this.
We also have introduced two new strategies: DECOMPOSING and NUMBER LINES.
Using a number line to solve the equation 37 + 48 could look like this:
Click on this link: Decomposing to see an example of decomposing.
There are so many ways to solve addition equations. It is important that we try different strategies to find the one that works best for us.
Have fun doing some more practice at home. You might even be able to teach mum and dad a strategy they have never tried before 🙂
We started this term with Italian Week. Over the three days the students participated a variety of activities that demonstrated different elements of Italian culture – story, song, dance, celebrations, sport, food and geography. We enjoyed making Venetian Carnevale Masks and dancing the Tarantella. Italian Week was a great tuning in for our inquiry learning this term.
In Year Two the students will this term be working through an inquiry to develop respect for cultural diversity and will have opportunities to explore ways that diversity presents opportunities for new experiences and understandings.
The first step in our inquiry is for students to become more familiar with elements of their own heritage and cultural background. Over the coming week, we are asking that students interview their parents to find out about this. A set of guiding questions have been sent home. Information is to be collected in note form. Students will be using these notes in class to create a non-fiction poster to present to their classmates.
Some students will find this task easier than others because they have a very diverse cultural background and strong connections to cultural traditions. Others may need to think a little harder to discover things to share. For example my family have been in Australia for a very long time and there are very few cultural traditions, foods or activities that we hold important. However there are many religious celebrations that are very important to my family that I could share. Passing on of skills such as baking and craft making is also something that is significant.
All notes and any other images that may be helpful are to be at school by Friday May 2.
Here is another copy of the survey:
Good luck with your research 🙂
Term Two – Determination from Miss M on Vimeo.
For the “Taking Action” part of our inquiry, the Year Two level formed action teams to plan and promote a day of Almsgiving for Project Compassion.
Each team had members who learnt how to use the Publisher program to make an advertisement for the day, some members who created a PowerPoint presentation to explain our day and a team member who organised some activity ideas for use on the day. Each action team were allocated a grade from our school. Once their products had been made we made a time to talk to a grade about our PlayFULL day.
The 2MS teams worked really well and did a great job presenting to the students in grade five & six.
Here are some examples of our promotion materials:
In the afternoon we went to each grade and collected their Project Compassion. We worked together using our understanding of adding coins to work out how much money was raised. Lots of people at our school did a great job with their Almsgiving this Lent 🙂
