Ancient Civilization Project

Hello and welcome back to another busy week. We’ve had a week of professional development and planning, so it has been non-stop here. I wanted to share a few things I’ve been working on starting with our upcoming history unit on ancient civilizations.

For the next 5 weeks we’ll be taking an in-depth look at ancient times and the early civilizations that changed our world forever. We will explore their daily lives through stories, media, science, and technology to come up with our very own museum exhibit that will be on display for schoolmates, teachers, and staff. Check out the digital guidelines that I created on sliderocket.com and a little treat from the 80’s. Have a great week!

 

If you haven't used sliderocket yet, give it a try. It's super easy to use and fun to work with.

You know you want to!

FIS Olympics

Happy Spring Break to all of you out there who actually get one. We have a non-pupil week here, but hey, I’ll take what I can get at this point. At least I’ll be ready to take on the rest of the school year, right? Well it has been a brutal couple of weeks here trying to wrap things up before break, but we made it.

Last week we held our annual school Olympics complete with a cheer contest, relay races and one mean tug-of-war finale. Of all the events that we do throughout the year, this one seems to be the crowd favorite. And this year was no exception, despite the heat, everyone had a great time.

Here are some highlights from the events:

Landscapes- David Hockney Style

A few months back, I took a wine and canvas class at our local art studio. It was so much fun, and I was so inspired, that I decided to replicate it (not the wine part, of course) in my classroom. I’ve been saving this project for the second semester as a sort of reward for making it through the first half of the year, and it just so happens that it matched up perfectly with our earth science unit.

The theme of the lesson was landscapes and how the beauty of nature is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. Landscape art and artists are as varied as they come, from Monet to Van Gogh to Kandinsky to Matisse; all the great artists seem to have had an interpretation of nature. And why wouldn’t they? So we looked at different styles and interpretations of landscape art and we looked more in-depth at David Hockney who is known for his use of vibrant colors in landscapes. The kids then chose a landscape they wanted to paint, and we went from there.

This art project was quite an undertaking, and I’m not sure I would do it again, despite the fact that they turned out beautifully. I suppose I underestimated the time and effort it would take to get the quality outcome that I wanted. The kids were running out of steam at the end of our third session, and that’s never a good thing in art, because then they rush to finish it. It was, however, a good practice in patience and delayed gratification, which I suppose is beneficial for all of us at times. Here are some shots from start to finish. Hope you enjoy them!

 

Children's Book Project

We are wrapping up our earth science unit and getting ready to go on spring break here in a week, so I really wanted to give my students a language arts project to tie it all together before they go on vacation and forget it allJ It’s been quite a few weeks since we’ve done any sort of narrative writing because we’ve been in our expository unit, so I wanted to give them the option to do some creative writing for a change.

For this assignment, the students have two options- 1) Create a storybook that relates in some way to earth science, or 2) make a picture dictionary that relates to earth science. In either case, students will be responsible for creating a 20-page book for a young child audience. This is great because it forces them to think about their word choice and eliminates the “copy & paste” method that they may be tempted to use. Plus, it gives both right-brained and left-brained students the opportunity create something cool.

On my search for a digital option for this project, I remembered storybird.com. I’d used it last year, but completely forgot what a great site it was for creating stories. Since that really only works for the storybook option, I also gave my students the choice to create a wikispaces page. Here’s the rubric and guidelines that I created for this project along with a really great storybird story. If you haven’t used this site, I suggest you check it out. It’s awesome, and better yet, it’s free!
Happy Saturday, folks!

Children's Book Project Guidelines
Children's Book Project Rubric
 

Landform Project

Wow, what a week it’s been here, folks. We survived Dr. Seuss week and are gearing up for our annual Olympics next week. Under normal circumstances, I would be really excited to help out with team banners and cheers, but I have been beyond busy and just trying to keep my head above water. Anyway, I was brainstorming for some creative projects and experiments to get us through our earth science unit and wanted to share a couple of things I’ve been doing. I’ll start with our landform project…

For this project I had the students choose a landform from an approved list, research the forces that helped to create it, and how weathering and erosion continue to slowly transform it. They are well underway on this assignment and things are going well. I will post pictures just as soon as I snap some, so stay tuned for those. For now, check out the quizlet set of landform vocabulary that I found online (courtesy of rmslonghorns) along with the project guidelines and rubric I created for this project.

Grade 6 Landforms

Landform Project Guidelines

Landform Project Rubric  

Dr. Seuss Week

To celebrate one of history’s most influential children’s authors, we’ve been reading a Seuss story each day in class this week. Of course the kids love it, but it also offers so many teaching and learning opportunities too. Here are a couple of the things we did with Seuss week this year:

Story Elements-

Dr. Seuss books are the perfect tools for teaching key story elements like characterization, plot, rising action/climax/falling action, conflict, and the hardest one of them all- theme. All you need is a mini-lesson to review story elements and then you follow it with a Seuss read-aloud or even a youtube ebook, and BAM, they get it. With books like The Lorax and Star Bellied Sneetches, this stuff literally teaches itself. Below is a copy of the prezi I found on story elements along with the story map that I created to go along with The Lorax. I’ve also added the ebook that we used in class so you won’t have to go on a hunt for it.

 Seuss Story Map Worksheet

Figurative Language-

Everyone knows that Dr. Seuss is a master rhymer, but sometimes we miss the chance to show other figurative language techniques that he uses to our students. I had one of those ah-ha moments about 2 weeks after Dr. Seuss week last year and could have kicked myself for not seizing the moment. This year, I was ready though, so today we watched this killer video put out by the folks at flocabulary.com on figurative language and again, followed it up with a Seuss story to see what kinds of examples we could find. If you haven’t seen this already, it’s well worth the 3 minutes.

 

Seuss-tastic Door Decor

Hard to believe it’s already Dr. Seuss week again, but hey, time flies when you’re having fun, right? Here’s the fun we’ve been up to in our corner of the world.

Door decorations galore-

Every time that a new theme or event comes up, there’s this unspoken gauntlet that gets thrown down amongst the teachers for classroom, hallway, and door decorations. I like to think that I’m not really a competitive person, but my coworkers and partner would totally disagree. Once they made the announcement about door decorations at our staff meeting last week, I summoned all the creativity I had (aka- I turned to pinterest) and set out to create my masterpiece. Although there aren’t awards or prizes for best door, I’ve already won in my headJ Here’s the final product:

The Lorax- of course.

Ms. Amanda's Sneetches door

 

Idiom Task Cards

I’ve been looking for some fun language arts task board activities for March and I came across these GREAT cards on Teachers Pay Teachers. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to access my account to log in, so I took the idea and ran with it. All in all, I think these were a success… grab a copy of this activity below!

Idiom Cards-1
Idiom Cards-2
Idiom Recording Sheet