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Classroom activity Grade 2 English Language Arts

Three Cups on the Windowsill: A Grade 2 Retell and Reason Activity

A two-day grade 2 activity where teams watch ice melt and refreeze in labeled cups, retell the change in order with temporal words, and argue that it can be undone.

Objectives

  1. Students will observe and record what happens to ice in three places.
  2. Students will retell the change in order using first, next, then, and last.
  3. Students will write one reason sentence saying the change can be undone.

Vocabulary

Key words: melt, freeze, solid, liquid, evidence

Teacher overview

Teams of three set up three labeled cups of ice in three places in the room, check them across one school day, and then watch the melted water freeze again overnight. The retelling carries the writing work. The cups give every student the same ordered sequence of events, so the temporal words they practice have real events to hold together, and the second day gives them evidence for a reason sentence about a change that can be undone. A misconception worth naming aloud is that melted ice has been used up or destroyed, and watching the same water refreeze in the same cup gives students a reason to treat melting as one step rather than the end of the story.

Activity Directions

  1. Setup on day one (8 min). Put students in teams of three. Give each team a tray, three clear cups, tape, and a marker. Teams label their cups Cup A, Cup B, and Cup C, and write their team name on the tape. Drop two ice cubes into each cup.
  2. Place the cups (4 min). Each team carries Cup A to a cold spot such as a shaded shelf away from the heater, Cup B to a table in the middle of the room, and Cup C to the sunny windowsill. Teams say aloud where each cup is going before they walk.
  3. First look (4 min). Every student writes or draws what the cups look like right now on item 1 of the handout. Ask the class which word fits the water in every cup at this moment, solid or liquid, and take a choral answer.
  4. Second look after lunch (5 min). Teams return to their cups. Students record item 2. Ask each team to say one sentence out loud beginning with the word next.
  5. Third look before dismissal (5 min). Teams record item 3, then carry all three cups to the kitchen freezer. Tell students the cups will sit there overnight.
  6. Day two, the reveal (6 min). Bring the trays back and let each team look without touching. Students record item 4. Ask what the water in the cups is now, and why they think so.
  7. Retell in order (10 min). Teams line up their three day-one records and their day-two record and take turns retelling the whole story with the words first, next, then, and last. Every student must speak once. Then students write their retell on item 5.
  8. Reason sentence and debrief (8 min). Students write item 6, which asks whether the change can be undone and what evidence supports the answer. Close by asking two teams to read item 6 aloud, then ask the class one question: does every change work this way, and would a cooked egg go back to being raw in the freezer? Collect the handouts. The activity ends when every team has read its retell to one other team.
Three Cups on the Windowsill: A Grade 2 Retell and Reason Activity — Grade 2 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Write or draw what you see. Use short sentences.

  1. Day one, first look. What is in Cup A, Cup B, and Cup C right now? Is it solid or liquid?
  2. Day one, after lunch. What is in each cup now?
  3. Day one, before you go home. What is in each cup now?
  4. Day two. What is in the cups after a night in the freezer?
  5. Tell the story of your cups in order. Use the words first, next, then, and last. End with a closing sentence.
  6. Can the change from ice to water be undone? Answer yes or no. Tell what you saw that shows it.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: Ice, which is solid. Every cup starts with two ice cubes, so the water in all three cups is solid at the first look.
  2. Answer: Answers will vary by cup. Expect the sunny Cup C to melt first. The cool Cup A may still hold a little ice, or all three cups may be liquid water by now.
  3. Answer: Liquid water. Expect liquid water in all three cups by the end of the day.
  4. Answer: Ice again. A night in the freezer turns the melted water in every cup back into solid ice.
  5. Answer: Answers will vary. A full-credit retell puts the four looks in order, uses at least three of the four temporal words, describes what the student saw, and ends with a closing sentence rather than stopping mid-story.
  6. Answer: Yes. Accept any evidence from the student's own cups, such as the melted water in Cup C turning back into ice overnight, which shows that warming and cooling water can be undone.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a four-box picture strip labeled with the four look times so they can draw before they write. Let them dictate item 5 to an adult and copy two sentences. Provide the frame for item 6: "Yes, because my cup had ___ and then it had ___ again."

Extension

Ask teams to predict, before day two, whether the water in all three cups will be ice again in the morning, and to write one sentence saying why. On day two they compare the prediction with what they saw and write whether the evidence matched.

ELL supports

Pre-teach melt, freeze, solid, and liquid by holding an ice cube until it drips and naming each state aloud. Let students point at their cup and say the word before writing it, and accept labeled drawings for items 1 through 4 while their English sentences develop.

Extensions

Set one extra cup of water on the windowsill uncovered and leave it for a week. Have students add a sentence to their retell about where that water went, which sets up the water cycle work that comes later in the year.