Exploring the Moon's Characteristics

We've just completed a really fun unit - as you saw in my community sharing post, we've just wrapped up our space unit. As a teacher, some of the *best* weeks/months in the classroom are times when I'm able to integrate all our learning together into one integrated unit. Thanks gosh for inspiration late in the evening one Saturday night. {You know those nights you lay in bed, and can't shut off your brain?} Moon misconceptions!

I set it up with my kids by telling them something horrible happened! We were attacked by an awful moon monster, spreading TEN vicious rumors about the moon - things like, "The moon is made of cheese,"  "There is a man in the moon," "The moon changes shape in the sky." Can you believe it? They are precious, and love play-acting like this. 

Lucky for us we had several non-fiction reading articles, math measurement experiments, and science experiments to help us fight this ruthless rumor-mongerer.  ;)  Two of the activities we did were "the man in the moon" article reading and math craftivity to prove there's nobody living there and a "moon bounce" experiment to prove the gravity on the moon ...

We also did some pretty fun other things -- read other non-fiction articles, completed experiments, even made our own sweet moon model treat!

Moon experiment to explore phases of the moon. 

Ebbinghaus illusion - the reason the moon looks bigger than the stars around it.

Ingredients set up for our creation of our very own moon model made from crispy rice treats. :)  

Completed moon layers! YUM! 

It was a smashing success, and something I'm pretty excited to continue when we learn about energy and forces in motion this upcoming week. I guess there's always a chance this rumor monster could return ... ;)

If you're interested in completing the man in the moon and moon bouncing activity with your kids, you can find them here at my TpT store,  but the best deal is the full "moon misconceptions" unit that includes those two activities, plus our fact and fiction pre- and post- test sort, along with all the correlating activities to dispel the TEN rumors that horrible moon monster put into the world {it's a huge unit - 60 pages full of moon fun!!}.

Happy learning!

The Man in the Moon

I am LOVING learning about space! Especially the moon, because it seems like everything can be related to the moon. One thing I struggle to teach is non-fiction reading and strategies, specifically those in articles, primarily because the articles I find are usually either a) too easy b) too hard or c) too boring c) not appropriate for second graders.

SOooooOO ... I wrote my own! Seriously I don't know why I didn't do this sooner. So silly - I can tailor the "article" to teach any subject matter I want AND I can add or take away challenging vocabulary and text structures. Plus it takes WAY less time than searching the Internet Machine {my best friend calls it that and makes me giggle every time}.

I projected the article for the whole-group debrief.

Above is our anchor chart for summarizing fiction vs. summarizing non-fiction. We have two options when summarizing non-fiction - answering the "5 Ws and H" or using the main idea and several details. {I'm partial to the main idea and details option ... }

After that little brainstorm, I kept thinking - why not integrate our math time? We needed more measurement practice, so VOILA! The Man in the Moon unit was born.


We studied the rumor ... read the article, found cause and effect, main idea of each paragraph and then summarized. Then we created our own moon men using rulers and good old fashioned team work {never hurts}. I love the results!

Face options for the moon men.

I didn't get a completed picture - so sad! 

 

Favorite Projects

I've been looking through old resources and work, trying to clean up and organize myself as we move into the fourth (!!!) quarter of the school year. It's crazy the amount of work that we create new each year, even though I've been in second for five years! Every year I think of something I'd like to do better, or try new.

One of my favorite projects that we did last year was our Liter Leader Project. This was an integrated unit that ended with the kids created superhero "leaders" out of 2-liter bottles. We first did some research on important leaders, learning about non-fiction text features, research and a five-paragraph essay format. We tied in capacity from math, character traits ... all kinds of things!  Then we used some of our fiction writing skills to create a superhero alter-ego for the character. It sounds crazy, but it really sparked their creative energy! See some of our work below:

Please pardon the old pictures - they're a year old now! :) 

"Discovering" this old project has inspired me - how can I use a similar idea as we move into capacity/geometry/poetry? Hmmmm ... this might be my weekend project!