Today our nation voted for President of the United States. And so did our class! I had prepared a lesson over the weekend for the students about voting and participating in the process. Scholastic News had a magazine (of course) about it and I wanted to make sure the students understood about everything.
We had a student shout out some rather inappropriate comments about the opposite candidate that they supported (because second graders should have such a strong opinion!) so I timed the entire class out at that point and talked to them right then and there about respect and not giving our opinion about things like that if people aren't asking for it. I showed them a video published by Scholastic and had them read their magazine. Then I had a flipchart that I had found and altered that gave some additional information about everything and then had them vote. I read online over the weekend that Scholastic News has had kids voting since something like 1986 and only two times have the "kids vote" been different than the actual president results. Our class was very close, but 56% voted Barack Obama and 43% voted Mitt Romney. The Scholastic News results were also Barack Obama so we'll see what happens. The polls are closed at this point but they are still counting.
We observed the oat seeds today for the first time. They were doing NOTHING up to last Friday even though we planted them over a week before. Honestly, on Friday I was going to just throw them away. I got distracted though and ended up forgetting. Yesterday when we came into school I was shocked at how much they had grown! The kids were really excited about it too- seeing a new thing growing. We are moving along in our science unit. Things are slowly progressing. I am having them write a descriptive paper on the life cycle of a sunflower. I had found a great book online about sunflowers and the Belleville Library was supposed to have it. Unfortunately I went there tonight and couldn't find it. I'm disappointed but I did find the Magic Schoolbus "seeds" episode that one of my students keeps talking about and wanting me to show the class so I'm going to squeeze that in somewhere and show it to them.
Tomorrow we have a big assembly in the morning for Veterans Day. The whole school is in the gym and they are honoring vets. I read that the assembly will take over an hour- hopefully this is NOT the case but I have backed down my plans if it is. I fill my days with things I want to teach them and can't lose sight of the goal of keeping them on target and within the curriculum!
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