2KM @ Leopold Primary School!

Yesterday was the first day of the school year for our blogging buddies in Mrs Yollis’ third grade class in California, USA.

2KM has been friends with Mrs Yollis’ class since early in 2009 so the new students are the third group of students who have been our blogging buddies!

In the past, 2KM has enjoyed leaving comments on Mrs Yollis’ class blog, working on some fun projects on our Collaboration Corner blog together and even skyping together!

Mrs Yollis’ class would love all their friends from the 2KM community to leave them a comment on their blog and introduce themselves.

We look forward to working on some exciting projects with Mrs Yollis’ class next term and we hope we may get to skype again too!

What do you like best about collaborating with Mrs Yollis’ class?

What would you like to work on with Mrs Yollis’ class?

Today is the first day of spring. After having one of the wettest and coldest winters for many years, everyone in 2KM is looking forward to some nice spring weather!

Today we made some acrostic poems about spring which we made into a kite!

What do you think of our work?

Can you come up with an acrostic poem about spring?

What do you like about spring?

Last year, our friends in Mr Salsich’s Grade in Connecticut, USA, wrote a fantastic post about arrays.

This week we started learning about arrays and we used Mr Salsich’s idea for this post! Thank you Mr Salsich for letting us use some of your work!

An array is a group of objects arranged in rows and columns. Each row has the same number of objects.

Arrays are useful for skip counting and solving multiplication problems.

The array above has 3 rows of 4 blocks. That is 3 groups of 4, or 3 x 4. We can find out how many blocks there are by skip counting by 4’s:  4, 8, 12 – or by doing repeated addition: 4 + 4 + 4 = 12.

There are 12 blocks. So, 3 x 4 = 12.

Here is a slideshow of some arrays around our classroom! Can you solve the multiplication problems?

What are the answers to the multiplication problems in the slideshow?

What other arrays have you seen around?

Today everyone in Grade Two visited the Melbourne Museum to learn more about our topic of dinosaurs.

It took nearly 1.5 hours to get to the museum by bus.

When we arrived we had snack and then spent half an hour looking at the Dinosaur Walk exhibit. We learnt a lot! We liked seeing all the skeletons, the fossils and even dinosaur eggs!

After that we got to look at all the other exhibits like the Human Body, Aboriginal, Melbourne, Bugs Alive, Science and Animal exhibits. The rainforest was lots of fun to explore too!

One of our favourite things to see at the museum was the famous race horse, Phar Lap.

We had a great day. Thanks to our helpers Sandi, Fiona, Mel and Sue who came with us.

Check out our pictures from the museum (most of the photos are of the students who were in Miss McGeady’s group!)

What was your favourite part of the Melbourne Museum?

What did you learn?

2KM love watching a Behind the News (BTN) episode each week to find out what is happening in the news.

Today we watched a BTN story about the results of the federal election that was held on the weekend.

For the first time in 70 years, Australia has a hung parliament. That means no political party has the majority of votes.

To find out more about this, watch the video below.

What did you think of the story?

What does federal mean?

What are the main political parties in Australia?

If you were in charge of Australia, what would you do?

Today an entertainer called Tony Barber visited Leopold Primary School. He performed a show called Write Ideas. This show was all about using your imagination! Tony showed us different characters he has made and how these characters have helped him to write stories. We had lots of fun singing and laughing with Tony!

What did you think of the show?

When is it important to use your imagination?

The Age is a big newspaper here in Victoria. On Wednesday, Jewel Topfield, a reporter from The Age came to visit our class to see what we are doing with technology. Jewel loved seeing how we use our interactive whiteboard (IWB), blogs, iPod Touches and computers to help us learn.

Today there is an article in The Age newspaper that mentions some of the great things 2KM is doing in their class.

Click here to check it out

This is a national article which means it is also in the big newspapers in the other states of Australia like the Sydney Morning Herald and the Brisbane Times!

There is also a big photo of us playing a game on the IWB which is in the newspaper version of the article.

What do you think of our feature in The Age?

What technology do you like to use to help you learn?

Everyone in 2KM really loved today’s science experiment!

Miss Brasier showed us what happens when you mix a Mentos lolly with a bottle of Coke.

The effect was amazing! Check out our video for the explosive results of this experiment…

So now you can see that when you drop a Mentos into a bottle of Coke, it erupts out of the top of the bottle like a fountain!

So, why does this happen? It is a physical change. There are lots of tiny little air pockets (like little holes) on the surface of the Mentos. The gas in the Coke ( which is called carbon dioxide) is attracted to the little holes on the Mentos. All of the gas rushes to the Mentos and pushes the Coke out of the bottle.

We had the same result with normal and Diet Coke.

Tip: If you do this experiment at home, you could drill a hole in the top of the lid of the Coke bottle for a bigger eruption like Mr Marshall did with 2KM in 2009. And make sure you do it outside!

What did you think of this experiment?

What have you learnt in science so far this term?

In 2KM we like to practice reading with fluency and expression.

Reading fluently means reading smoothly so your reading sounds like talking. Fluent readers don’t stop-start; they read fast enough without rushing their reading.

Reading with expression means making your voice sound interesting so you don’t sound like a robot. The sound of your voice goes up and down when you read with expression rather than sounding all the same.

It is important to read with fluency and expression so you can keep track of what is happening in the story and so you can enjoy reading.

In Guided Reading today, the students in Merah group practiced reading with fluency and expression and recorded their efforts on a VoiceThread. The book we were reading was called Mystery Mints by Virginia King.

Listen to Bianca, Ashleigh, Tyler and Kamarah reading a page from the book.

What do you think about Merah’s reading?

What books do you like reading?

For the last two weeks, Miss McGeady has been on the look out for two students to start their own blogs. She was looking for students who were dedicated to leaving comments on the 2KM blog and replying to others’ comments.

The two people selected were…

and

There is a lot to learn about blogging and these girls are working hard with Miss McGeady to find out as much as they can.

Click here to visit Rhiannon’s Blog

Click here to visit Bianca’s Blog

The links to these blog are also on our blog sidebar under “Student Blogs”.

Bianca and Rhiannon would LOVE to receive comments from all the 2KM blog visitors.

What do you think of Rhiannon’s and Bianca’s achievement?

What would you blog about if you had a blog?