Hard Hats for Little Heads

We are so lucky to learn, teach, and work in a town with such a prestigious university. There are so many wonderful learning experiences that we can take advantage of being near Texas A&M University. Our field trip to the Hard Hats for Little Heads program was such a fun morning. We took the quick bus ride to the university along with hundreds of other second graders from around the community. The presentation took place at Reed Arena, and focused on the importance of helmet safety in sports as well as other outside activities such as bike riding and roller skating. The kids loved seeing some Aggie athletes giving demonstrations of proper helmet use, and even having a little practice with a former Aggie Yell Leader. And it was a beautiful day on top of it all! 

Here are some photos I took as well as a short video at the bottom on this post. Enjoy!

Hard Hats for Little Heads from Lizzie Ortega on Vimeo.

Valentine's Day!

We had a GREAT Valentine's Day in our classroom. Our special breakfast with our Valentines (parents) was a hit with the most delicious spread provided by our incredibly supportive families. The kids ate everything from pop-tarts to kolaches and loved every minute of it. Sadly, I was so busy playing hostess that I didn't get any pictures. But I DID manage to get some photos of our afternoon as we passed out valentines to each other. I let them pick ONE candy to have before dismissal and got a photo of each of their happy little faces. 

How-To's and Thick vs. Thin Questions

In February we began our nonfiction writing unit with how-to writing. This is always one of the their favorite writing units because they get to write about thing that they are good at. We began with a guided writing piece together but then they were off to write their own how-to based on their expert list. So of course we had many book involving Minecraft and Skylanders, and it was wonderful to see them become authors of their own passions. 

In reading we really worked on our busy reading brains. We discussed the difference between thick and thin questions. A thin question provides the reader with a simple yes or no answer.. But a thick question provides the reader with a meaty answer that allows us to grow our schema. We had so much fun playing Head Banz as we practiced the difference between these two types of questions. We learned quickly that if we wanted to identify the secret item on our heads- we HAD to ask THICKER questions! They kids were so awesome at this, and made me so proud!