Can I just tell you how amazing our field trip was last week? It was epic. Seriously. Here is how it happened: My team this year is just fabulous. We literally come up with last minute ideas during lunch and then we do everything in our power to make it happen. This field trip is the dream of one of those lunch talks. As I mentioned here, I have made it one of my missions this year to really "beef up" the amount of social studies and science in the classroom. In college, I made a leaf collection book after we did a unit on how to incorporate plant life cycles into science in the classroom. This made me want to do the same thing with my students as we finished up our unit on plants. My students are so hands on this year, and they LOVE science. A local college near our school has an arboretum. I mentioned to my team that it would be awesome to be able to take a field trip there so the students who look at the different trees, their leaves, and learn about ...
science
Science and Reading..A Blended Unit
Every year, I take a look at my classroom curriculum and see what I can add to it the following school year to help prepare my second graders for life in third grade. I am a big believer that the academic jump from second to third is one of the most challenging transitions in school. In TN, Science and Social Students are not tested skills for second grade, but we do have standards that we need to cover. I really wanted to amp up these two content areas this year, but I was unsure of exactly how to do it. I finally decided that the only way that I was going to be able to make it work was by combining my Reading and Social Studies/Science into one block. We are switching between S and SS in biweekly rotations. Our first unit was all about Life Science-living vs. nonliving, plant and animal needs, parts of a plant, and plant life cycles. My students LOVE Science(which is sadly not my favorite subject), but I have really enjoyed teaching it over the last two ...
