Literacy, Writing, Research and Making....Oh My!

The 2nd graders in Megan Warwick's room at Van Meter have been working on an awesome project tying in literacy, opinion writing, research and making. 

 

She focused it around Carmen Oliver's wonderful book, Bears Make The Best Reading Buddies. 

All of our 2nd graders learned about the Bears Make the Best series when we Skyped with Carmen a few weeks ago.  It was so much fun!  You can read all about our Skype here. 

Megan took this book and used it for the inspiration behind an opinion writing piece where students..

...wrote what their Reading Buddy would be. They did brainstorming, organizing, 

and lots of writing around their ideas. 

As they worked on their final draft and illustration, I came in to do a little maker activity with them too. 

As we introduce 3D printing to 2nd graders, we have been using a couple new tools...Wikki Stix and 3Doodler Start. 

Megan's students were going to create the animal they thought would make the best reading buddy from the opinion writing there were working on. 

These tools...

and materials were new to the 2nd graders, 

so they took some time getting to know them. 

They also used Capstone's PebbleGo Animals as a...

...ways to research and look at what their animal looked like. 

We loved watching them cut, bend and fold as they researched.

 As they learned how to use the 3Doodler and Wikki Stix,

 their animals...

 came to life.

Take a look at a few of their special creations!

They had so much fun! 

Projects like this show us how much it means to our students to put meaning to their learning and to let their creativity and passions shine through.