Ep 44: 2nd Grade Tasks for Building a Thinking Classroom!

Looking for ways to make 2nd-grade math engaging and fun? In this episode, we’re sharing creative, story-based tasks that get your students excited about skip counting, place value, addition, subtraction, and more—all while building critical math skills!

Here’s what we’re covering:

🍊 Skip Counting at the Orange You Sweet Orange Factory—help your students count baskets of oranges in multiples of 5, 10, or 100.

👾 Place Value Party Planning with the Aliens of Countaria—can your students decode the alien languages and save the “Outta This World” Block Party?

🏴‍☠️ Treasure Hunt Adventures with Pirate Captain Redbeard—solve length problems to navigate the treasure map and uncover hidden treasures!

🍫 Brownie Partitioning at the Brownie Bakery—partition rectangles into rows and columns to figure out brownie orders.

📏 Measuring with the Cube Queen and Popsicle Stick King—compare measurements and decide when to use larger or smaller tools.

🍦 Dreaming of Ice Cream with Whirl’d of Swirls—build rectangular arrays to keep up with growing ice cream orders.

Links & Resources: 👉 Grab the full task bundle here! 👉 Check out the blog post here!

Tune in and let’s make math an adventure! 🎉

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Today is the day to dive into second grade math tasks and in this show notes

(00:04):
You can find a link to one that you can try absolutely free
Hello and welcome to making number sense make sense a podcast for elementary teachers specifically early elementary teachers
Looking to really make an impact in the number sense of their students

(00:25):
We talked about kindergarten talked about first grade and today is the day for second grade and
a huge part of the bundle that I worked on is
Different problem types that your students can use that they will see over and over again in the math
Curriculums that they're using including one step and two step story of problems

(00:47):
but today I'm gonna dive into the ones that aren't necessarily as
Cut and dry that have a little more spice to them with a story
So the first one is skip counting by five tens and hundreds
So in this task your students are in an orange factory and this orange factory
Offers gift baskets that come with five oranges per basket ten oranges per basket or a hundred oranges per basket

(01:13):
So your students have to help the orange factory the orange is sweet orange factory
Fill all of their orders so they have to figure out how many oranges they need for each order by skip counting by five
tens or hundreds
it's got fin slicing already built in with the different orders that they try and

(01:33):
The check your understanding falls right along with it. The next task
I'm gonna share is all about reading and writing numbers to a thousand
so the story here is that there is an alien planet called Cantaria and
They are trying to prep for the out-of-this-world
Alien block party, but there is some translation issues between all of the different

(01:56):
Aliens the aliens speak all different languages and they can't communicate with each other to plan this party
So the different aliens are the standard tracks aliens who write all their numbers in standard form or write all their communications
In standard form the base, Pennsylvania aliens that write theirs in base 10 the numeria aliens that write their

(02:17):
messages in word form and the
Expandatron aliens that write all of their communication in expanded form
So your groups will have a record of communication that has some gaps in it
So they need to figure out which form they're working on and then
Complete the different numbers in all of the forms to save the day and make sure that all the aliens attend the out-of-this-world

(02:41):
Block party to celebrate their planet
The next task is an addition and subtraction
Word problem task involving length
so in this one your students have come across a
Treasure map and this treasure map has different distances between 0 and 100 to different
Landmarks in the area where the treasure is so your students have to figure out the distance of each path and

(03:08):
Decide which path is the one that they want to take to be able to get to the treasure in the shortest amount of time
The way that they're going to figure it out is they're going to use the clues
Given which is their thin slicing the different clues telling them which landmarks they need to hit in
Order to reach the treasure and the check your understanding piece is if they want to make a detour

(03:29):
So they know where the treasure chest is
But they might have the opportunity to get some pearls or gems or something else that might make it worth their while to make a detour
On their way to find the treasure this next task is about partitioning
Rectangles into rows so there is a brownie bakery that takes very special orders

(03:51):
And in these orders the clients decide how many rows and columns they want in each of their brownie pans
And that will help your students figure out what the total number of brownies should be so to start with they're going to partition
Into rows and columns and count how many the total is and the thin slicing is if they finish all of the orders

(04:13):
Now they only know the total I need to figure out how they can partition their brownie pan to work
And so they have little brownies they can work on they also have a big one that you can put into a dry erase sleeve
So they can practice and see what will work best for the orders that they are working on if you heard the first grade
Task this might sound familiar. This is the return of the

(04:36):
Cube queen and the popsicle stick King so they are again trying to remodel a room in their castle
But they're having a disagreement about what's the best way to measure by cubes or by popsicle sticks?
So in this task your students will have to measure each item twice with the cubes and with the popsicle sticks and figure out

(04:57):
When it's better to use a popsicle stick versus a cube and this the consolidation piece will again be a note-taking
Where they can really think on the what they have just done and when it would be best to use different
Measuring tools to get the best results the last task. I'm going to share with you today is
The ice cream shop arrays task

(05:19):
So in this one the your students have a dream of opening their own ice cream shop called the world of swirls
But they know that they need to start a little smaller and build up to that goal
So they start with an ice cream cart and they're gonna complete orders given to them by their clients
so in this one they can only take up to three orders at a time so three cones at a time and

(05:41):
The ticket or the receipt will let your students know how many scoops each cone needs and they'll find the total
Once they finish that that's their first their original task the thin slices they get to move up
So they already they are rocking it with the ice cream stand. They want to move up to an ice cream truck
So in the ice cream truck they can fill up to four cone orders at a time with varying amounts of scoops

(06:07):
Find the total and then finally they will make it to their own ice cream shop that can make up to
five cones at a time with up to five scoops per cone and
Calculate the total of how much ice cream each order will use
Working in second grade and coming up with tasks for second grade was a lot of fun

(06:28):
Because I feel like they've got the foundations from kindergarten. They got the foundations from first grade now
You can really dive into the stories and making it come to life making the math come to life for them in
Context in a way that will get them excited to keep going and excited to get to the next step
Whatever that step maybe

(06:49):
Please let me know if you have any questions about these tasks
If you want to see them in action get a closer look you can check the blog post that is in the show notes
There is a free two-step
Subtraction task that you can get again in the show notes below and you can reach out to me on Instagram and let me know
How it went?