Picnic Day and Teach the Class!

We had such a beautiful day on Friday to celebrate our picnic day!  The sun was shining and the students were ready for the dance party!  

Friday was a special day because the students were tasked with teaching the class (and me) about a topic of their choosing.  I was so impressed with their creativity and the effort they took planning their activity.  While they did give a few stern looks, they were patient with their classmates and teacher as they explained their activity.  I hope you enjoy seeing what we learned...

Lincoln taught us some wrestling moves.  His models were very brave!

  Christian taught us how to swing a golf club.  

 Souji taught us how to chop boards in half!  

 I was a little nervous here!

 Lila taught us some skateboarding moves!

 Talie taught us all about building fairy houses.

 Cameron taught us how to make a dog and a bracelet with origami.  

 Roman taught us how to play blackjack.  He even brought in his own money for us to make bets!

 He also was showing us how he counts cards.  Careful with this one!

 Augusta taught us all about her sweet dogs Lincoln and Nixon.  

 James taught us how to do a back walkover.

 Lucy was in her element as she taught us how to make slime.  

 Everyone was fascinated by her sand slime.  

 Henry taught us all about paddle boards and then had the class decorate one.  

 Richard taught us how to make a knot for fishing.  

Madison taught us a lacrosse move and then had us practice.  

 Jack showed us how to plant tomatoes. 

 Sam taught us how to make lemon cookies.

Small Moment Story and BMI Field Trip

Over the last several weeks, the students have been hard at work writing their small moment stories.  Every student went through each step of the writing process to complete this piece.  While writing is a continuum and everyone is at a different level, every student made progress with their writing through this process.  Here is the process we followed for this project:

Developing Ideas/Brainstorming- After making a list of  important moments in their life, the students picked their top three small moments and sketched a picture to help them spark ideas.  After some discussion, the students chose their top idea.

Prewriting- Each student took their idea and made a timeline of their events.  They were not to reveal what the big event was until box four or five.  Each box contained one sentence which was eventually added to their draft and expanded upon.

Drafting- The students drew pictures of each event from the timeline and worked to write at least eight sentences for each paragraph.  The biggest challenge was writing in the present tense!

Revising- The students used a checklist to proofread their typed draft.  They added in verbs, adjectives, similes, and metaphors to enhance their story.

Editing- The students used an editing checklist to check over their work.  Their last edit was with me!
I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I have!  Please celebrate this writing with your child. 

Our trip to the Baltimore Museum of Industry was fantastic!  The students learned all about the oyster industry in Baltimore and got to go back in time to work in Mr. Platt's cannery during the 1800s.  The students were paid tokens for their work and quickly learned the value of money and the value of skilled work during this time.  Some students were appointed as bosses and they did not hold back as they bossed the workers to work harder!  It was truly a blast!  

 

 

 Oh, no!  After taking tokens for the "needs" they had no spending money left!  

 They were not happy about this!  

 Fun in the phone booth!