Holiday Card Exchange

The 2B boys and I have recently received many fascinating holiday cards made by children from many parts of the United States, Canada, Russia, and Australia. Most of the cards contained wonderful letters written by students in our card exchange group which describe the culture and customs of their towns and cities. We have had fun locating each place on our map! We also sent Flying Pig Holiday cards to the 23 classes in our group, and we enclosed lots of info on Elvis, Memphis, barbeque, PDS, and a link to our Tennessee voice thread!

Click here for the Australia Voice Thread-Holiday Card Exchange to see and hear a clever voice thread from our friends in Hawkesdale, Australia!

Click here to watch a voice thread from our friends in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada! It has lots of info on the 2010 Winter Olympics, too!

Click here to see a voice thread from our friends in cold and snowy Russia!

Click here to see a Google Map of all locations of our Holiday Card Group!

Progressive Story Project

In this voicethread, you will see and hear the results of a month long collaborative project with 2B boys and 4 other schools from the United States and Switzerland. Each class wrote a part of the story together and then created graphics for their portion of the story. These were posted and recorded using voicethread technology. We worked with 2 schools from Pennsylvania, one school from Oakland, California, and a school in Canton Zug, Switzerland.

Tennessee State Symbols

Tai Chi Comes to 2B!

Tai Chi Comes to 2B! on PhotoPeach

Thanksgiving Message from 2B

Make a Smilebox slideshow

2B Joins Global Progressive Story Project

In the past few days 2B boys have participated in the Progressive Story Project using the Progressive Story wiki. This is a Web 2.0 tool which allows students in Pennsylvania, California, Switzerland, and Memphis to collaborate on one story!

The first two parts of the story were written by two classrooms in Pennsylvania, and 2B has finished and posted the third part. You can read below what has been written so far in this group effort!

Next, a class in Switzerland will post their portion, and the ending will be written by students in California! How will it all turn out? What will finally happen to Professor Tyler and Fiffy, the Wonder Dog?

Our story so far- we are in story group #5.

"Mwah ha ha ha," said the evil scientist, pleased that his invention was a success. Professor Tyler used to be a mild-mannered chemical engineer until one day he tripped over his cat and tumbled down the stairs of his lab. He crashed to the floor and lost consciousness. When he finally regained consciousness, his personality had changed forever. He was not kind and friendly anymore. He had gone totally insane. Professor Tyler built a giant robot whose purpose was to destroy everything and everyone it met. He had finally finished his creation and he wanted to begin total world destruction. Professor Tyler climbed into his robot and began counting down to lift off. 10, 9, 8, 7...Tyler could hardly wait, 6, 5, 4, 3...CRASH! Fiffy, the wonder dog came bursting through the window of lab.

“Bam, Kaboom, Bang, Screech!” the sound of metal popping pieced the air. Standing in the middle of the pile of melted metal, which was destroyed by her laser-vision, was Fiffy!
“Your dreams end here, boy!” Fiffy exclaimed.
Professor Tyler, who had narrowly escaped being melted with his robot, grinned and said, “Why do you always underestimate me, Wonder Dog? You will never catch me now!”
Suddenly, Professor Tyler dashed toward the hidden escape hatch in the laboratory wall and vanished. At the end of the secret passageway, Professor snuck in the forest surrounding his laboratory.
Professor ran as quickly as he could to the Swamp of Powers, which was hidden deep within the forest, and dove in headfirst. As he swam deeper and deeper into the murky waters of the swamp, he began to feel the tingle of power oozing through his veins.


Professor swam quickly towards the surface and suddenly, he felt much stronger and more powerful! Once he reached the surface, he saw that Fiffy had mysteriously duplicated herself.Orange and yellow lightning shot directly from his hands, and it hit all of the Fiffys except one. They were knocked out and lost consciousness. The one Fiffy who was still conscious saw Professor Tyler with laser beams rocketing from his eyes and growing larger than ever. Fiffy jumped, and the laser bounced onto Professor Tyler rapidly. The laser flipped him right back into the Swamp of Powers.

Splash! Mud is bubbling over Professor Tyler’s head. Muscles are popping out of his arms. His feet are giant and his hands are glowing. Blast off! Tyler shoots out of the swamp and hovers over the forest. Fiffy flies into his ear and tickles his brain. Professor Tyler starts laughing and his body starts shrinking. Fiffy can’t escape from Tyler’s ear. Once Tyler’s powers are gone, oops!, he falls to the ground.
Professor Tyler’s cat has been roaming the forest for him. Suddenly, SMASH! The cat steps on something hard. He sees wonder dog Fiffy fly up in the sky. Professor Tyler is dead and the world is saved from destruction.

Tongue Twister Project- The Letter J!

Bdiaz's Show on PhotoPeach



The jolly, jubilant jellyfish jogged to the joyful jungle on a jittery journey to Jupiter.


What a great tongue twister! The 2B boys worked together to create this jazzy tongue twister and are illustrating it as part of our global collaboration on the "Tongue Twister " project. Students in 27 classes from California to New York, along with 3 international classes in Canada and Scotland, are working on their letter pages for a collaborative book of tongue twisters. The pages will soon be finished and mailed to the 26 other schools in our database, and we anticipate getting lots of mail from our partners on this project very soon! When the book is finished, every boy will bring it home to share with his family.

2B Tackles the Rock Wall

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

BubbleShare: Share photos - Find great Clip Art Images.

My Favorite Day in Second Grade

What was your favorite day in second grade? What day was the most fun or the one you remember the best? What day would you like to have again if you could choose one day from this year?

Because of Winn-Dixie

We have been reading aloud from Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate di Camilla.
It is the story of Opal, a young girl in Florida, and her dog, Winn-Dixie.

How do you think Opal has grown and changed so far in this story?

How do you think Winn-Dixie has grown and changed by this point in the story?

What about the preacher? How do you think he has grown and changed since the story began?

What do you think about the other characters like Gloria Dump and Sweetie Pie Thomas?

Would you like to meet Opal and Winn-Dixie?

Do you think it would be hard to move to a new town where you didn't know anyone?
Have you ever moved to a new town?

Animoto, 2009

Would you buy a used car ( I mean book!) from this young man???

These are a few of our very cool commercial book reports that 2B boys presented recently about a fiction or nonfiction book of their choice. You'll definitely want to read a book after watching these "book commercials"!

Please feel free to comment or recommend any of your favorite books.

Cool commercial Book Reports

Would you buy a used car ( I mean book!) from this young man???

These are a few of our very cool commercial book reports that 2B boys presented recently about a fiction or nonfiction book of their choice. You'll definitely want to read a book after watching these "book commercials"!

Please feel free to comment or recommend any of your favorite books.

Cool Commercial Book Reports

Would you buy a used car ( I mean book!) from this young man???

These are a few of our very cool commercial book reports that 2B boys presented recently about a fiction or nonfiction book of their choice. You'll definitely want to read a book after watching these "book commercials"!

Please feel free to comment or recommend any of your favorite books.

Cool Commercial Book Reports

Would you buy a used car ( I mean book!) from this young man???

These are a few of our very cool commercial book reports that 2B boys presented recently about a fiction or nonfiction book of their choice. You'll definitely want to read a book after watching these "book commercials"!

Please feel free to comment or recommend any of your favorite books.

We are reading My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett.

What is your favorite part of this book? Why?
Elmer had many interesting things in his knapsack like lollipops, hair ribbons, and magnifying glasses. What else do you think he might have taken and used on his adventure?


You may post a comment about this exciting book.

There are two more books in this series that you may want to read.

They are Elmer and the Dragon and the Dragons of Blueland.

You can find them in the PDS Library.

What Are Presidents Made Of?

Math Curse

Math Curse is a great picture book by Jon Scieska! We read it in the library and talked about it. Then we interviewed our parents about ways in which they use math in their jobs. Click on the comments section to see what we found out!

Yipes Stripes,2009!

Flying Pigs Celebrate World Math Day!

This year we have enjoyed World Math Day in a big way and have participated along with 1.5 million other students in 200 countries in this very exciting online event! What was it like to participate in World Math Day? What was interesting and exciting about this big event on March 4, 2009?
Think about the day and the practice time you had before March 4, and post your comments.

Wordle!

Here is a Wordle we made about our presidential research for Yipes Stripes Day! Each boy has researched a president and will be making a speech as though it is the opening day of his presidential library.
You can make more wordles by going to our class web site and looking for the Wordle bookmark.

Lincoln Voice Thread-Happy Birthday, Abe!

Abraham Lincoln - Our 16th President

We have been reading books about Abraham Lincoln and thinking about his life on the anniversary of his 200th birthday. We even made a voice thread about Abe Lincoln! You can see our voice thread on our blog. Mr. Lincoln's Boys is one of the stories we read which helped us think about the fun times that the Lincoln boys had in the White House!

We also took a data survey of the pennies we have in our classroom. The oldest penny we have was made in 1961 and our newest penny was made in 1998. That is a range of 37 years!

What if Abe Lincoln were to visit the United States today? How has the world changed since he was president in 1861-1865? What would you tell Mr. Lincoln about the world of 2009? What new inventions do we have? Do you think our world of 2009 is better or worse?

Mr. Popper's Penguins

Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater tells the unusual story of a man who dreams big about exploring the North and South Poles! In this book he is surprised to find a penguin delivered to his door one day and sets about making room for this penguin in his family's home. If you could adopt any odd pet, what would it be? How would you take care of this strange animal? What would you feed him ? What would it be like to own a _______??

• Think about it and post your thoughts on our first blog post for the 2B Flying Pigs Blog this year!