Reading Roots

 

In our Reading Roots class, students read a story called The Artists of Benin City.  In the story, artists at the Queen's Art School in Africa created a bronze metal hippo.  Our STAR story, Crafting Fun for a Rainy Day, provided directions for making clay animals.  For our Adventures in Writing lesson, students chose to write how to make a clay hippo.  After students wrote their directions, they were able to use them to create their own play-dough hippo.  

The students worked hard on their projects!

~peace~

Mrs. Dryzal

Learning in Room 23

Math

 

 

Last week, we completed our Geometry Unit in Math.  As a final activity we read the book, The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns and then created a shape man or woman, and wrote why we would want to be that shape.  The children were very creative with their ideas.

 

Writing

 

As part of our St. Patrick's Day activities, Lucky the Leprechaun visited our classroom and brought us magic powder that made Leprechaun pudding when milk was added and we shook it up while singing a special chant.  We read the story The Luckiest Leprechaun by Justine Korman and then wrote about when we feel lucky.  Above is our display and below are two examples of their work. 

 

Reading

 

In Reading, my leveled group just completed the Reading Roots program.  They will now begin Reading Wings, the program for grades 2-5. The last book we in SFA Roots was Paul Bunyan's Pancakes To celebrate, students wrote a tall tale about a larger than life pet they would have similar to Paul Bunyan's pet, Blue Babe.   As part of the celebration, I made pancakes from scratch, and we had them as a mid-morning snack.  The children really enjoyed them!

 

 

Language Arts

 

In Language Arts, we are working on Research Writing.  This unit we are focusing on Earthworms.  On Friday, students observed a live earthworm and made Venn Diagrams comparing earthworms with people.  Their observations will be used as part of their research writing project.

 

Thank you for stopping by!

~peace~

Mrs. Dryzal

 

 

Theme in a Bottle

After reading Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman, the students created these Theme Bottles. I found the idea here. The students each wrote a letter from one of the character's points of view. This letter expressed the main character's feelings about the life lessons he or she had learned. Since the story took place in the middle ages, the students wrote on themed paper and began the letter with a letter in the illumination style. I found great border paper and illumination letters here. It was a great way to make theme more concrete for the students.

~peace~

Mrs. Dryzal

Simple Machine Websites

We are reading a book about simple machines in Reading class. Today we used the interactive white board to visit this site about simple machines. It is interactive and is a great way to learn how everyday objects are actually simple machines that make our lives easier.

http://www.edheads.org/activities/simple-machines/

Here's some more information about simple machines:

http://www.mos.org/sln/Leonardo/Inventorstoolbox.html

Show what you know at the Gadget Academy:

http://www.mos.org/sln/Leonardo/GadgetAnatomy.html

~peace~

Mrs. Dryzal

Feeding the World

While reading Feeding the World by Peter Winkler, my reading class students suggested that we collect canned goods to donate to a local food pantry. Above is a photo of some of our students with the donated canned goods. The canned goods will be donated to St. Vincent DePaul's food bank upon completion of our drive.

A big thank you goes out to the families who donated to our drive!

Thank you for stopping by!

~peace~

Mrs. Dryzal