Monday, December 17, 2012

First Grade Movie Stars!

First graders became actors and actresses as they starred in their own Water Cycle movie!  Learning the skills of choral reading, projecting their voices, and of course the steps of the water cycle were the goals of this project.  Hollywood, here we come!















Friday, December 14, 2012

Poetry Reading, Podcast Style

Mrs. Kearing has been looking for a creative way to work on reading fluency with her students.  After taking the Apple professional development class, she discovered GarageBand, a tool for recording podcasts.  Together we created a poetry podcast!  Each student was recorded reading a poem utilizing the skills of inflection, pace, volume, etc.  The third grade definitely rose to the occasion!  What an outstanding job!!


Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The Perfect Community!

Fifth graders have been working on Operation: Create a Community project.  By learning that throughout history, people have grouped themselves together for protection, assistance and companionship, thus becoming linked together not only geographically but emotionally, the students learned about becoming a community.  "Learning Crews" designed the "perfect community" utilizing their skill in persuasive writing to describe characteristics that make their community a desirable place to live.
Special thanks to Mrs. Quinn's fifth graders for letting me observe their project, the writing process and final creations.  Below is just one example of a book that was created.  This book can be downloaded on your iPad, iPhone, Nook, Kindle etc. by going to https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=forest+hills and signing up for a free account.  Well done fifth grade!