Community Paper and Peace Wreaths

Before vacation each child had the opportunity to make a Peace Wreath. The first step in creating the Peace Wreaths was to make community paper.  Ms. LaRose had never made community paper before (it is rather messy and requires a lot of supplies).  However, Mrs. Plunkett was a tremendous help with the supplies (all of which were hers) and she taught Ms. LaRose how to make community paper.

As a result, on Monday we began making community paper! The first station was the splatter paint station where students used a spoon and tooth brush to spray paint all over their paper.  The second station was the saran wrap station where students would lay a piece of saran wrap over their painting and mix the paint together.  The last station was sponge painting.  Students used old sponges to create a piece of paper fully covered in paint!  We let our paper dry overnight.  In addition to the three painting stations, another station used the Cricket to die-cut the letters in “peace”.  A BIG thank you to Kari (Zach’s mom), Pat & Erin (Trinity’s parents) and Liz (Emily’s mom) who helped with the making of the community paper.

On Tuesday, students used the community paper to cut out their hand prints.  Each student had to cut about 10 hand prints.  We then glued the hand prints around a paper plate.  Students glued the letters “peace” over their hand prints.  The last step was to glue a ribbon on the back of the paper plate. Thank you to Brenda (Alaina’s mom) who helped in many ways on Tuesday.

The students in room 6 and Ms. LaRose are very appreciative of Mrs. Plunkett, her help in this project was instrumental in its success!  

Creating a Healthy Plate and using iMovie!

Throughout our Nutrition Unit we have learned about MyPlate, healthy and unhealthy choices, beneficial nutrients and nutrition labels. Before vacation, students put all of their learning and discoveries together to create a balanced plate. Students were presented with the “Healthy Plate” challenge. Students’ healthy plates had to include a food item from each of the five food groups. Students then created an iMovie explaining their healthy plate.  Their video included which food group each food item belongs to, nutrients found in their food items and how these nutrients help their bodies.  On Tuesday, students learned how to upload their videos to YouTube and then embed their video onto their blogs!  You can view our iMovies by clicking here.  This was a very exciting project and the excitement comes through on these videos! If you have a moment please check out your child's video, students worked extremely hard on their videos and would love a comment (or two)!

Our Week in Review

Name of People and Places

On Thursday we learned about a special text feature in biographies: Names of People and Places.  Students learned that we can expect to find the names of people and places in biographies, capital letters are a big clue.  Students went on a names scavenger hunt in biography books.  Below are photographs from our scavenger hunt.  We took a photograph (using the iPad) of a page in a biography, and we then uploaded the photograph to the app, “Explain Everything”.  From there we were able to highlight the names of people and places.  We circled and labeled the names names of people and names of places.  We also discussed how students know whether a word beginning with a capital letter is a person’s name or a place.  Some of our clue words to help us know it is a place are (born in, lived in, moved to, grew up in).

Lino

Lino is a new app that we are using during our guided groups in Reading Workshop. Lino is an online web sticky note services that we are using to document our thinking while we read. The wonderful thing about Lino is that each guided group works off of the same canvas allowing students within the same group to see their group members’ post-it notes. Once the post-it notes have been generated we can organize them into categories (changing the post-it notes color), leave new post-it notes answering a group members questions, ask a question about a post-it note, etc…, the possibilities are endless. Lino is also available for parents to see at home. Just ask your child what guided group they are in (what book they are currently reading and click here). Our username and password are both ppslarose. You can access Lino on your desktop or download the free iPad app.

Our Week in Review

Biographies -- Week of Nov. 30th

This week in Reading Workshop we have been learning about a new genre in reading: Biographies.  We have learned that a biography is a true story of someone’s life (bio=life  graph = write).  We have talked about why a person has a biography.  As a class we determined categories people who have biographies written about them fall under.  We then found various biography books in our classroom and sorted them into the categories.  Below are the categories and the biographies we sorted under each category. As we read a new biography each day we are going to add to our list! 

Leader:

Abraham Lincoln (president) 

Harriet Tubman (led people on Underground Railroad)

Martin Luther King (led people to freedom) 

First at Something:

Rosa Parks (first to refuse to give up her seat on a bus) 

Amelia Earhart (first person to fly plane over Atlantic Ocean)

Inventor:

Thomas Edison (invented the light bulb) 

Artist:

Vincent Van Gogh

Athlete:

Babe Ruth (baseball -- Red Sox and Yankees) 

Musicians/Singers:

Taylor Swift 

Miley Cyrus 

Would You Rather?!?

On Monday we began our Opinion unit of study.  To begin this unit students learned how to participate in collaborative discussion by building on others' ideas and expressing their own opinions clearly.  Students partnered up with a classmate and completed a "Would You Rather" activity.  Students had to circle the activity that they would rather do.  They were then able to discuss their opinion with a partner and provide reasons for their choice. 

Some examples from the Would You Rather activity were... 

Would you rather run across a hungry alligator's back OR run underneath an angry elephant.

Would you rather paint a large wall with a toothbrush OR paint a large wall with a spoon. 

Would you rather go without TV for the rest of your life OR go without junk food for the rest of your life.

Be sure to ask your child what they selected and why!