Happy Holidays!

Thank you all for such a great turnout at our holiday party! Have a wonderful vacation with your families!

Check out our classroom holiday card and more pictures from our holiday party below:

PBL: Earth's Surfaces and Holidays

Over the past two weeks students have been immersed in a project-based learning unit in our classroom. Throughout our science, reading, and writing blocks we have been studying Earth's surfaces and the people who live there. Our guiding question was: How can we learn about our Earth and different cultures?

Students worked in small cooperative groups to become an expert on a chosen continent. They used clay to build a model of their continent, adding landforms, as well as labeling salt and fresh bodies of water.

Each team worked together to research their continent and learn more about Earth's surfaces!

Team South America

Team Africa

Team Asia

Team Australia

Team Europe

Team North America

Team Antarctica

We started learning more about the culture of our continent in Reader's Workshop by researching an important winter holiday celebrated there. Each group used a book created by Ms. Durgy and I to help them with their research. Students used what they learned to create a brochure to teach others about their holiday. Reading other brochures helped us see all the different cultures and traditions celebrated around the world. We were fortunate to have parent volunteers in to help with the research portion of this project!

Earlier this week built a world map using our continent models. The students enjoyed seeing their work come together as one final product!

We celebrated our learning with an exhibition for our parents at our holiday party on Thursday afternoon! Thank you to all parents who came and shared in the celebration of our learning!

Flipgrid: Holiday Traditions

We are having fun learning about holiday traditions around the world! We've created a classroom book about what traditions are special to our family and made a matching video to share on Flipgrid. Check our your child's video below!

Elf Store Visit

We had a great time on Thursday visiting the Grade Two Elf Holiday Store to decorate our elves. Thank you to our 10 fantastic volunteers! Now, we will use this character to help formulate a creative writing story in Writer's Workshop.

Monday in Writer's Workshop, we will brainstorm ideas for our setting, characters, magic power, problem and solution. More updates coming soon as we craft some creative stories!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Last week students celebrated an early Thanksgiving! We made 'thankful' pumpkin centerpieces, used Google Classroom to read many animal fantasy Thanksgiving stories, and disguised our own turkey on Google Slides!

Check out our turkey stories below:

Mindfulness in November

We celebrated a big day today! Students worked hard to show mindfulness through the month of November earning feathers for teamwork, creativity, self control, determination and respect. Today, every student was excited to showcase their full headdress, each earning all five feathers!

Over the past two months, students worked through the writing process: brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and today-PUBLISHING their own personal narrative stories. I am thankful that I have a group of such hardworking students that come into the classroom ready to learn and be their best selves each day. Have a fun Thanksgiving celebration with your families!

Artist's Workshop: Publishing

Proud Authors and Illustrators!

World Kindness Day

Today is World Kindness Day! Today during indoor recess we explored a fun, interactive game called Kind Kingdom. Check it out at home!

Link: Kind Kingdom

S.T.E.M. Challenge: House of Cards

This afternoon we had our second S.T.E.M. Challenge of the year: 'House of Cards'! Students showed determination and perseverance to work in small groups and complete the challenge.