Students listened and participated in reading the text aloud in class. Then they worked in pairs or small groups to synthesize the reading and take notes to answer questions and fill out the organizer.

My students worked so hard this unit to reach our unit goal of celebrating cultural differences!

Here's our wall display for the Navigating School Inquiry!

The children loved working through this unit! They were very excited to included all the places in our school, as well as showing all the people that make our school a great place to learn. When choosing a project, they were eager to build something using all of the planning and prep work they had done.

We launched our Meeting Needs and Wants unit this week in social studies! My second graders were SO excited to learn about needs and wants and discuss what is a need versus a want in a community. We came up with a list of places in our community that are must haves versus may haves, and then created "2R Town", named after our class. Students worked collaboratively to build and design our town full of buildings that fit the needs of a community. Of course, a few "wants" were thrown in as well! At the end of the day today, after spending a full hour and a half learning and creating, a student told me that this was "the most fun he's ever had during social studies" and that usually he "doesn't enjoy it". Other students chimed in and agreed, saying that this unit was already fun and exciting! I am looking forward to continuing this unit with my students!

Students were proud of the work they put into their Mini Posters! Analyzing connections between historical Indigenous Americans and their cultural areas was challenging but rewarding.

Students studied a state in a particular region and made a scrapbook page, which showed human characteristics, natural characteristics, recreational land use and summarized how this state fits in that region.

How can we contribute to a healthy democracy?

Our end of unit project was so impactful. Our students were able to make connections to the world around them and we ended with a creek clean up service project that they are excited to do again.

Check out our posters from the Native America Inquiry!

We had so much fun with the extension lessons from Module 2 from the Innovation Inquiry. The class was really excited to get their questions answered and they got hands on real life experience of what Oral History is. The parent was worried about being prepared for their questions so I typed up their questions and sent them to her ahead of time. Everyone is an expert in their own lived experience and we all have experience with innovation. She also shared how they are living to see advancements in AI and self driving cars (Waymo is coming to our city soon!). She also talked about how innovations can bring positives and negatives so it was really great to grapple with that nuance. I hope I will be able to do another round of this with another parent who showed interest that uses technology at work. Really engaging and dynamic lessons that make learning fun and memorable. I pulled up a picture of what a Nokia cellphone looked like and the class was floored.