New Studio 214 Cast Members!

   

     I was working over Christmas break one evening in our room and went to check on our guinea pig before I left to refill her water and give her some more food and to my surprise, she had babies!  There were four in all and so little and cute!

Life as a Snowflake...

     During our weather unit, we reviewed the water cycle and we created an art project with a creative writing piece to explain the process of what happens to a snowflake during the water cycle, with a twist.  The projects turned out really cute!

Instrument Projects

     We are wrapping up our science unit on weather this week and students had to create a weather instrument.  They had the choice of which weather instrument to create and used a rubric to reflect and score themselves.  Then they presented their projects to the class and explained the purpose of their weather instrument and how it was useful for predicted weather.  They did a great job!

"Reading Salad"

     So I was at a meeting a couple weeks ago and another teacher from Owensboro was telling me about a book she uses in her reading class.  I ordered it from Amazon and started reading it and is has the best ideas to increase comprehension!  The first lesson we did was creating a reading salad and I was able to model to the students how we should stop and making connections to our reading when we are reading any type of passage.  I had a couple of helpers to make the salad as I was reading the book "Don't Laugh at Me", which is also a great conversation starter for how we should treat others.  I am using this resource during our RTI time and cannot wait to the rest of the lessons- I know it will make a positive impact!

Here is a copy of the book I'm using to increase student reading comprehension!

Fraction Strips- Van de Wall

     We have started our fraction unit and last week, we created our own fraction strips using colored paper.  We started out with the easier fractions, such as 1/2 and 1/3, then we moved to some tougher ones.  Students had to figure out how to fold their strips of paper to create the fractions and make sure their pieces were equal.  It really stretched their thinking and this came from a math resource written by Van de Wall.  It is great!

Bowling and the Movies

     Before Christmas break, we had some really fun things that took place!  The first was our AR reward for reaching the first two AR goals and students got to go bowling.  They had so much fun!  The second trip was our Dream Dollar Vacation and students got to go watch the new Smurfs movie at LWM on their big screens and have popcorn and drinks.  It was a lot of fun and really felt like you were at a big movie theater, but with two screens!

This video was too funny not to post!  They were having a great time!

5...4...3...2...1... and ACTION!

We are finally back in action in Studio 214!  We've had a technical glitch with the blog, but we got the kink worked out and we are back online.  Thank goodness because we have so many new things to share!  I hope you are having a great January and enjoying the extra days off...