2ND-4TH GRADE
CHALMERS ELEMENTARY 22
• Gainesville SPOT SPOTlight light • Winter 2020
C
halmers Elementary is dedicated to
develop engaging ideas, develop elements
providing a positive, caring, and safe
of how-to articles, organize steps, include
environment, giving all students an equal
introductions and conclusions, include a
opportunity to reach their full potential for
variety of transition words, and develop
academic excellence.
structural elements for our how-to
SECOND GRADE
articles. We did this all while going
It is all adding up at Chalmers
through the steps of the writing process.
Elementary as our confident second
Our main goal was to be able to use
grade students learn addition and
elements of an informational text to write
subtraction. Our friend Addition Annie
a how-to article independently.
helps us learn that addition is all about
We developed two final pieces of
combining, putting together, and the
writing during this unit with two projects:
sum. Then we have Subtraction Sally
How to Carve a Pumpkin and How to
who teaches us that subtraction is about
Create a Monster Craft. We were able
taking away.
to brainstorm, plan, rough draft, revise,
We are second grade students, but
edit, and complete a final draft. Through
we equally compare to all students
this unit and the writing assignments, we
because we are motivated in our abilities
have gained a better understanding of the
to learn about greater, less, and equal
genre elements and writing process for a
numbers. That’s right, second grade
how-to article.
might be one grade lower than third,
FOURTH GRADE
but we are all eating the greater number called 100% learning. As Ember Garrison in Mrs. Gibbs’
Throughout the second six weeks, fourth-grade students worked on an animal research project. We researched
class said, “When I learn about math, my
many different animals in the categories of
brain starts to work all the time. Math
amphibians, mammals, birds, fish, insects,
takes focus.”
and reptiles. We each then selected the
THIRD GRADE
animal we wanted to research and used
In third grade, we have learned how to
books as well as educational websites
