Saturday, March 24, 2012

Welcome Back from Spring Break!

Today was the first day of fourth quarter.  Be sure and check your child's Take Home Folder for his or her progress report.  They should be very proud of their accomplishments!

We started our day working in our Exploratory centers.  Several students finished their center and were able to choose a new one today.  Ask your child about their current center and task.

After reflecting on last week's Canadian folktale, Tuk the Hunter, the students completed our Waste Not, Want Not book.  They worked in pairs to think creatively and brainstorm ways to reuse and recycle household trash items.




As they generated ideas, they typed them into our Power Point presentation.  I think  their ideas were terrific, but I was most impressed by how well they collaborated with their partner.  Every single pair worked hard, got along well and required little to no help.  Outstanding!  I see independent learners emerging!




In the afternoon, the students were introduced to our newest Quirkle, Pressure Pete.
In our experiment the students learned that air moves from an area of high pressure to an area of low pressure.  They brought a straw home to demonstrate our experiment.  Ask your child to share their science log with you.





They ended their day with Senora Gates' Spanish lesson.  

We had a great weekend!

Friday, March 23, 2012

Take a Look Around Our Room...

I showed the students an App I put on my iPhone, 360Panorama.  We spent a about five minutes this morning and used the app to make this panorama picture of our classroom.  No surprise; we need to get a little better at holding very still.  LOL

Saturday, March 10, 2012

E Day Was Smokin' Hot!

"Oh My!" you say.  "A fire in the school????"
Yep, well sort of....

Our day started with some sparks....  Sparks of creativity that is....

The students were given a paper with a few squiggly lines and shapes.  Their task was to create a cohesive picture incorporating all of the lines and shapes.  They could rotate their paper as much as they wished in order to find the desired orientation.  Squiggles are more than just a cute art project.  These tasks exercise and strengthen the students' creative problem solving skills: fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration.










 

I encourage the students to think of many possible pictures and then see if they can choose a theme for their picture that is original within our class.  They have to be very flexible in their thinking to incorporate all of the given lines and shapes.  Once their picture begins to take shape, they must pay attention to detail and be as elaborative as possible.  (These same skills can be used when they are writing a creative story or solving a real world problem.)  The more they strengthen these skills, the more creative they will be.  Today we had an outer space scene, a view of the inside of a beauty shop, an alien attack scene, a camping trip, undersea scenes and several others.  ask your child to share their own squiggle with you.  Have them tell you what they did well, what was easy and what was challenging about this project.


 
Once I had their brains smoldering and sparking from our creative workout, I added in a little oxygen to achieve a flame, Ollie Oxygen, that is....

Ollie Oxygen is our latest Quirkle and today we learned that fire needs oxygen to burn.  



After reading our picture book and listing our new vocabulary words,  we conducted our experiment.  The students wrote a hypothesis for our problem:  Which candle will go out first when we limit the oxygen supply of each? In our experiment, I lit three small candles.  I carefully covered each with a glass container of varying size.  The students recorded their observations and wrote our class conclusion.  Ask your child to share their science log with you.



















After lunch and recess, we headed off to our next destination.  This adventure kept us on the continent of North America.  The students and I traveled far to the north, to the home of the Inuit people: Canada.  In our folktale, Tuk the Hunter,  we discovered some of the dangers faced by the Inuit people as they hunt to provide for their family.  

We also learned the Inuit do not waste any part of the animals they hunt.  For our project, the students are making a class book, Waste Not, Want Not.   This week they brainstormed ways we can reuse and recycle trash items.  Next week, we will work to finish our book.

The students ended their day with a little Spanish number/color BINGO with Senora Gates.  What a fun way to practice your Spanish vocabulary!

It was a busy day and their enthusiasm spread like fire, but in the end, the only smokey smells in our room came from our little candles.

Have a great week!

Monday, March 5, 2012

Where We've Been & What We've Been Up To...

What is it Mark Twain said?  "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated"-- or something to that effect.  Anyway, sorry for my blogging silence, I have been busy raising my teenagers.  LOL 

The Reader's Digest (not quite) Condensed version of the past few weeks....  

The Quirkles-

Mary Motion
The students  learned that an object will stay at rest unless force is applied (Newton’s First Law of Motion).











  


Nosey Nina
The students learned the our senses work together to send messages to the brain.











In our World Travels, we visited Russia and read the folktale, The Clever Maiden.



In our story, the the czar gave the clever maiden and her father several riddles to solve.  The students used their own creativity and wit to write their own riddles.  We are anxious to share these with you at our spring Open House!

Our next stop took us to India where we read the story, The Drum.  
It was a wonderful chain story that tells how a boy gets a drum he has always wanted, by chance, while he participates in a series of kind acts.  Along the way, someone gave him chapati, Indian flat bread.  So we decided our project for this story was to make and taste chapati ourselves.  
Our most recent adventure took us to the continent of Africa and the country of Ghana where we were inspired by the folktale Why Hare is Always on the Run.  We enjoyed learning a little about the African culture and their masquerade.  We learned about their animal masks, traditional dances and story telling performance.  In a masquerade, the dancers are usually men.  The masks and costumes are inspired by animals and ancestors  that possessed character traits and/or skills desired by the dancer.  

The students discussed and then listed their own character traits, talents and skills.  Next, they chose an animal they felt represented these traits and skills.   The students drew out the design for their own African-styled masks.  They are in the process of making their mask in ceramic clay.  I will fire them after spring break.  In the weeks ahead, they will finish their mask so it can be displayed at our Open House.







In the computer lab, the students continued learning to use Storybird.  They are working on some great stories! Encourage your child to continue to explore their creativity and ideas through writing.  Have them login to their Storybird account and share their stories with you.  Digital storytelling is a great motivator!

Over the past two weeks, I have introduced the students to another digital storytelling site, Kerpoof.  This free site is a Disney created website where students can make pictures, storybooks and even animated videos.  It is very user friendly, engaging and inspires creativity in children as they tell their stories.  Turn your child loose on this site and they will use their imagination and writing skills to create original stories, pictures, animated movies and other creative projects.  This week, the students were given an account under my teacher account.  They know their user login and their password.  The E Day students need to also remember their Class Account Code: K697.
This week, watch for our latest (much shorter LOL) blog update!