What’s the Story with Forces and Motion?

By: Keren Bein and Shannon Gomez, Second Grade West Teachers
In January, second graders began their physical science unit on forces and motion. Students were introduced to the scientific writing process by conducting hands-on experiments related to forces and motion. We laid the foundation by studying properties of materials and moved into concepts such as friction, gravity, aerodynamics, and momentum.
Throughout the writing process, second graders practiced asking questions about how the world works, making hypotheses, planning procedures, conducting trials, and analyzing the results of their experiments. This work was done collaboratively with lab partners and shared with the whole class during writing workshop shares. 

For our culminating project, second graders have selected an informational topic related to movement for their own informational writing piece. Students have chosen topics such as renewable energy, skateboarding, swimming, basketball, and even BASE jumping! Now second graders are learning to integrate scientific concepts such as acceleration, speed, aerodynamics, gravity, and more into their writing to teach readers about various topics.

Second graders have chosen topics that are both interesting and relevant to their lives. As they work on their writing skills, students are using mentor texts to gather more information and find text features they might use in their own nonfiction writing. Students are creating chapters, introductions, table of contents, diagrams, glossaries, and about the author pages as they get ready to publish their books. They’ll be publishing their books later this month and sharing their scientific findings with the greater community. Keep an eye out for these scientific publications and join us for their next publishing party!

Blending multiple core content areas is an important part of Live Oak faculty's approach to creating a cohesive learning experience for their students.  
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