Melanie Berlin

2nd Grade Math: Minding the Store

The second grade math group culminated a unit on money by creating their own pretend store.  Each student drew 6 items on little pieces of paper, and labeled them with their prices. The prices had to be less than $10.  Students were encouraged to choose prices that they could comfortably and automatically compute change for.…

Buddies Save the Day

In the second grade class, we recently started a writing unit on biographies. Students chose an African American figure that they wanted to learn more about. I gave students texts about the person they chose, so that research could begin. There are many good biographies written on a second grade level, but they are not…

Research

My second grade students have been recently introduced to the concept of research, and began a preliminary process in both Writing and Science last week.  In Writing, students are writing non-fiction information texts, or “All-About” books.  In order to learn more about their topic, students have borrowed books from our classroom library and I have…

Problem Solving

Our social-emotional curriculum, Second Step, teaches students about a series of steps (using the acronym S.T.E.P.) for solving problems (whether they be interpersonal, personal, or group problems).  I have found that, after explicitly teaching about each of the steps, using these steps with the class has been helpful in solving problems together.  With enough practice…