Oreo Writing, Testing our Thermos Designs and Arctic Story Mapping!

Reminder: If you have a book order that you need to send in to me please do so by tomorrow. The deadline for ordering was today but because we had many students away last week I have extended it to tomorrow. 

Reminder: Tomorrow is International Polar Bear Day. We would like to participate by taking part in the Thermostat Challenge. Please turn your thermostat down in the morning by 2 Degrees. If we all do this for the whole day and all of the Grade 2 classes participate that will be quite a bit of energy saved! 

https://polarbearsinternational.org/get-involved/international-polar-bear-day

OREO WRITING 

Students have been reading Newspaper Articles on climate change, and how there have been changes to the ways of living for people and animals of the Arctic.

We have been discussing what it means to have an opinion, how to support it with a reason and an example. I have attached some examples of templates of OREO writing. 

Today students will bring home the article they were reading and come up with an opinion. Tomorrow they will use this same article to decide on their feeling/opinion and then follow the OREO template to come up with 2 reasons that are supported by the article. They will use examples/evidence they have highlighted from the article to help them write their persuasive piece. They practiced doing this last week during our rotations with Mrs. McDonald. 

Please read the article with them and have them explain their opinion/feeling to you about the article. If they are able to, have them discuss 2 reasons from the text that support this opinion/feeling and highlight the supporting text. 

Tomorrow we will use the  OREO template to record a feeling for example "I feel worried about the polar bear because climate change is causing the sea ice to melt earlier and this is making it hard for them to find the right food" This would fall under the O for Opinion in the graphic organizer. There is a feeling but it is explained clearly and has a because or a why with it not just the feeling. 

The next step is to find 2 reasons from the text that support your opinion. 
Your Reason needs to be back up with an example or evidence from the text. Please help your child to discuss their 2 reasons and highlight the examples/evidence so that tomorrow we can use the graphic organizers to fill in our ideas and be ready for writing. 

Testing our First Prototype! 

Today we measured the temperature of the ice before putting it in our thermos and recorded this information. Then we added our ice and waited 15 minutes to measure the temperature again. We then recorded a final temperature 2 hours later to see how our designs were keeping heat out. Ask me what I discovered. 

Tomorrow we will think about how we might add, change or redesign our thermos on Wednesday afternoon when we will be given time to do this. What changes or adaptations do I think I might make to my design? 


Arctic Story Mapping

Today we started planning for our Arctic Stories. We had to decide who would be our animal characters. We will be the main character in our story but we needed to add 2 Arctic animal characters. We had to orally talk about what they look like (using our describing words (adjectives) and what character traits they would have). 

We then had to write these describing words and draw our characters in a quick 5 minutes sketch inside of our storyboard. This storyboard mapping template will be used all week to organize our ideas for our story. Tomorrow we will add setting to our storyboard. 

Olympics in Gym!