We had a terrific night, sharing Wonders with our families and community members at the Education Celebration on Wednesday! Though we were all pretty nervous, it was easy to talk about the projects because we had been working on them for so long and knew a lot about our topics. We showed our guests the materials we used for research and even shared Weebly and how we created the websites.
At the beginning, we planned to use the cameras we had purchased with our grant money for the project. As we started to narrow down our topics, we realized that we wouldn't be able to take photos or video of the things we were researching. It's pretty tough to capture ostriches and ATVs at school! Even the things we do have on the school grounds like butterflies, insects and snakes were tough to photograph. We spent a lot of time taking photos around school so for the Education Celebration, Ms. G printed out a bunch of them and hung them up on the classroom wall. You can see many of them in the first photo above.

Here's an article from El Latino San Diego about the event. You can even see couple of our students during their presentation in the photo on the right!
 
Picture
Googling and more Googling!
We've been working hard to get all of the projects ready in time for the Education Celebration coming up on Wednesday night. This is a special evening when we invite parents and community members to come into our classrooms and see one of the projects we've worked on this year.
The kids have been typing up their reports and searching the web for photos and video to help others really understand their topic. This part is easily the most exciting so far! It's so great to see the months of hard work finally come together.
We are lucky to have six computers in our classroom but when it comes to projects like this, it would be really helpful to have even more. It is so hard to be patient and wait for a machine to become available!

Although the children have been excited about the project from the very start, we've had some struggles with staying on track and working together. It has been a great opportunity to practice the Habits of Mind, especially Persisting, Managing Impulsivity, Thinking Interdependently and Remaining Open to Continuous Learning. Editing and revision are tough for second graders so we've also been able to work on Thinking and Communicating with Clarity and Precision and Thinking Flexibly. I'm so proud to see the children helping each other and really working as a team. I can't wait to see it all come together this week...
 
*This is a sample entry that we created together so that I could model how to use Weebly to create their websites. We didn't go back and complete it but I thought I would leave it here to show our process...

#1: What is the Iditarod?
by Ms. G and the Room 11 Kids

Have you ever wondered...
How many teams participate?
Do other places have Iditarods?
How fast do the dogs run?


Did you know?
The Iditarod is a dog sled race that is held in Alaska every year. It begins on the first Saturday of March in Anchorage and ends 1,200 miles later in Nome.

The Iditarod Trail has been used to transport mail and goods between villages across the Alaskan wilderness since the days when the settlement of Alaska first began. The race first was organized in 1973 to keep up the tradition of dog sledding culture and to preserve this historic trail.

Wonder Words to Know
sled
musher
dogs
booties
harness
checkpoint
white-out
blizzard
windbreaker
goggles
freeze-dried food
Alaska
Huskies


    The Room 11 Kids at LdV

    We are a 2nd grade class at Leonardo da Vinci Health Sciences Charter School and we are FULL of questions!

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