Here are some pictures from our classroom Holiday Party. Hope you enjoy the video!
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Holiday Poems
We had a few minutes before our Holiday Party began, so we decided to record some of the kids' holiday poems. We've been focusing on free verse poetry, and the kids have created some incredible images with their poems. We hope you enjoy!
Click here to listen to our Holiday poems!
The Amazing Read
What would happen if everyone in Greenville county read the same book at the same time? The Greenville County Library System has chosen The Pleasure Was Mine as Greenville county’s first community-wide, one-book reading initiative: The Amazing Read. The initiative will encourage reading, connecting families and neighbors through literature, and increase awareness of Alzheimer’s disease. I think it’s a great idea! It’s the same concept I use in my classroom. We always share a chapter book read-aloud (our current one is Maniac Magee). It provides a shared experience for everyone in the class, giving us opportunity to discuss and talk together about the text. I encourage all you parents to pick up a copy of this book and read it!
If you get a copy of the book, leave a comment on this post and let us know how it's going. I'm currently (as of December 19th) halfway through the book, and I'm really enjoying it.
Golden Apple
Last week we were in the middle of playing a math game when Beth Brotherton from WYFF and a camera man came walking into our classroom! We were surprised, to say the least! It turns out one of my former students, Hannah, had nominated me for a Golden Apple Award. Beth and the camera man spent some time in the classroom - videotaping us playing our math game and even singing a song or two. The kids were incredibly excited - it was truly an unbelievable experience. The kids got LOTS of face time, so I'm hoping that each one of them will be on the news segment.
If you want to tune in, it will be shown on Channel 4 WYFF on December 27th. I think it airs at 5:00pm.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
What Types of Objects Cause a Reflection?
This was the questions we persued in science last week. Students were given a variety of materials - aluminum foil, mirror, cloth, paperback book, wax paper, etc. They hypothosized if each type of material would cause a reflection. Students then tested the materials and recorded the results. After studying our results, we concluded that shiny, hard, and smooth surfaces cause a reflection. We went on to learn about the Law of Reflection, and we inferred how light waves react when striking various types of surfaces.
Anna checks her reflection in a sheet of aluminum foil.
Garvin checks his reflection on the back of a paperback book.
Community Calendar
To create a strong community of learners, we must get to know each other. One way we do this is with our community calendar. Each day, a student has a "piece" of the calendar. The student writes and draws something about him or herself. The student then shares his or her calendar piece with the class to begin our class meeting. Here is a picture of our completed November calendar. I always love the variety of colors and ideas that make up our calendar by the end of the month. 
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Visualizing
Good readers make "movies in their heads" while reading. Visualizing helps us understand the text in a deeper way. It connects us to what we're reading. Today in class we read an excerpt from Charlotte's Web that describes Zuckerman's barn. While I read it aloud, I did a "think-aloud," explicitly describing to the kids what I was thinking. After the kids had a chance to read it themselves, we discussed what the barn looked like in our minds. We discovered that our images were affected by our background knowledge AND the text. We used our background knowledge and prior experiences with barns to create an image of Zuckerman's. All of our barns had certain elements (as indicated in the text), but in some ways our barns were different - all according to an individual's background knowledge. We learned that a reader creates meaning as he or she engages with text.
Here's Caroline's barn!
Madison's Multiplication Strategy
I've taught multiplication for many years, and I've taught many different strategies for multi-digit multiplication. But the other day, Madison taught our class a brand new way to multiply! Madison combined elements of the traditional algorithm AND the partial-products algorithm to develop her own strategy - the Madison strategy.
We were all quite impressed with her mathematical skill, and everyone in the class attempted a problem or two using this new way of thinking.
Many times we think mathematics is very cut and dry - boring at times. But Madison has reminded us that math can be creative, spontaneous, and very discovery-based. I'm so proud of the incredible mathematical thinking and creativity that Madison has displayed. Study her work, and see if you can explain why this strategy works. It's very innovative!
Monday, November 26, 2007
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Writing Celebration
What stories! Thank you to all the parents who were able to attend our writing celebration. Our young writers shared the personal narrative stories they've been working on for the last month. Our students learned how to find a small moment, slow the moment down, tell the story step-by-step, craft strong leads and endings, revise the heart of the story, punctuate dialogue, and edit our writing. I was so impressed with the quality of their writing! Below you will find a video with some of the pictures from our celebration. I also hope to have podcasts of the student's stories up very soon. Come back and visit the blog for updates.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Red Ribbon Day Parade
Wow, what a day! We had a wonderful time parading around the neighborhood shouting our class slogan for Red Ribbon Day, "Show Good Character: Say No to Drugs!" Many of the kids came dressed as their favorite book characters. When you watch the video, make sure you keep an eye out for Horrible Harry, Clementine, Luna Lovegood, Alex Frankovitch, Katie Kazoo, and many more. And if you look really carefully at the cake our class enjoyed, you will see a really interesting character!
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Early Explorers Video
To review the concepts we learned in chapter 3, we created a short video highlighting the key words from our study. Several of the kids even created motions with their words. Enjoy!
Turning Magnets On and Off
Did you know that a steel rivet can become a magnet? And then "turn off" as a magnet? It can! This week in class, science teams turned steel rivets into magnets. They created a complete circuit and then wrapped the wire around the steel rivet, making it become magnetized (it's called an electromagnet). Students could then use a switch on the circuit to turn the magnet on and off. Here's Mira's diagram showing the set up of the experiment...
Here are a few pictures of the scientists as work. You can see the rivet picking up the small washers.
Incredible Leads
In writing workshop, we are writing personal narratives. One strategy we have studied is how to write leads that "pull" your reader into your story. By studying leads from great picture books like Peter's Chair and Fireflies, we learned that strong leads include action, setting, dialogue, or a combination which creates a mood. Here are two different leads Virginia tried out in her writer's notebook.
I love how Virginia incorporated the strategies we studied in class! The dialogue and strong verbs put us right into the action. Kelkcee also utilized many of the strategies we learned in class with the lead she selected for her draft...
I love how Kelkcee uses dialogue. The line "My face was filled with fear," is one of my favorites.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Multiplication Stories
After reading the picture book, Each Orange Has Eight Slices, we decided to write our own math stories. We created scenarios similar to the ones we read in the book. Here are Betsy, Virginia, and Adam's stories...
Electricty Flows Through...
What can electricity flow through? That was the question we asked as we explored conductors and insulators. We built conductor/insulator-testers (which really looked like something out of Star Wars) and went around the room trying to find various conductors and insulators. Students hung their testers around their neck and with the help of a partner, attached the wires of a complete circuit to opposite ends of an object. If the motor on our tester ran, we knew electricity was flowing through the object. In the picture below, Naomi, Kandice, and Amy are testing out a the metal end of a pencil.
We were surprised by our findings. ALL metals are conductors (which not all metals are attracted to magnets...hmmm); while glass, porcelain, rubber, and plastic are all insulators. Here's a picture of Anna testing out George's necklace.
Shocked
Have you ever gone down a slide, stepped off, touched something else, and then experienced a great SHOCK? If so, you've experienced static electricity. In class, we learned how every object has negative and positive charges. Negative charges are always wanting to "jump" to positive charges, and when they do - you experience a shock! In this experiment, we have given a balloon a negative charge by rubbing it against wool. We then placed the balloon above a mound of salt. Here's what happened:
The salt jumped up and attached itself to the balloon - WOW! The kids and I were really amazed. It's static electricity in action!
Friday, September 28, 2007
Native American Tableaus
To review our new learning of Native Americans, teams of students created tableaus that showed the environment, food, resources, travel, religion, and culture of each region. We hope you enjoy!
Electricity and Motors
On our second day of studying electricity, we learned how switches affect the flow of electricity in a circuit. As in our previous investigation, students were given a set of materials and asked to discover for themselves. I just asked, "How could you use this switch to make your motor turn on and off?" Using what they learned from our previous experiment, students were able to design a circuit that correctly utilized a switch. It was even more impressive when they were able to explain WHY the switch closed and opened the circuit. They had a great time experimenting and trying out new designs!
We also learned how to draw a schematic diagram. Here's Madison's Science Notebook entry:
Exploring Electricity
We had a great week beginning our study of electricity. I first asked our students to draw a diagram of how electricity flows from a battery to a light bulb. There were many different hypotheses among our kids. To test out our hypotheses, students were given two wires, a light bulb, and a battery. Their task was to make the light bulb come on. After several minutes, Adam and his table were able to light their bulb!
It took a little while, but every student was able to light their bulb. Several teams were able to find multiple ways for their bulbs to come on! Here is Elizabeth's drawing of the different ways we found to light the bulb...
We learned that electricity travels in a complete circuit, from one end of the battery to the other. If there is not a complete circuit (or circle), the electricity cannot flow through the receiver (in this case, the light bulb). Most of our students revised their original ideas, coming to a clear understanding of how electricity flows.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Different Ways to Add
Last week we focused on learning various strategies for adding large numbers. We reviewed the traditional algorithm, and we also learned the partial-sums and column addition algorithms. Each of these strategies forced us to gain a deeper understanding of what happens when we add. I want our kids to develop conceptual understandings of how numbers work, and these algorithms helped accomplish this. On this Friday quiz, you can see how Emily used all three of the algorithms to add numbers. Many of our students did the same thing, and I'm very proud of their mathematical thinking.
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