We are so proud of the children and the grit and perseverance they showed throughout these 2 weeks of testing. Now that we have finished with testing, we will have 2 main areas of focus in SS and ELA... OPERATION HILLSIDE OPINION PIECE We are nearing the end of this year long project. Our focus right now is writing a collaborative opinion piece, with the goal of "selling" each team's plan for the hillside. Teams have completed graphic organizers and are in the very early stages of writing their rough drafts. AND MARKET DAY On Monday, I will kick off a fun experience for the kids in which they will become entrepreneurs! Please keep your eyes open for a letter to come home next week explaining this project, as it will have an at-home component. FIELD TRIP PROJECTS It has been a lot of fun to see the field trip projects as they've come in. Thank you for taking part in this project. I will be sending a survey home about this project so we can tweak it for next year. Please fill out this survey when it arrives via email. GRAETER'S To celebrate the end of testing, as well as a tie-in to math, science, and social studies, we had a presentation by Graeter's Ice Cream on Friday. Children were treated to fun stories about the history of the company, as well as some awesome dry ice demonstrations. Thank you to the PTO for providing this experience for us! HAVE A FABULOUS WEEKEND!
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As I sit here and look out my window on an April morning, I am astounded to see snow! Ahh, springtime in Ohio! I'm so grateful that Mrs. Walther is such a firm believer in getting our kids outside; they had a fabulous time visiting Centennial Park this week, despite the less than perfect weather. I can't wait to read the Voices in the Field posts to learn about what was seen and done during this trip! ELA UPDATE We have spent quite a bit of time learning about point of view and perspective in writing. Along with this topic, came the introduction of first-hand and second-hand accounts. Students have read books and articles that show different people's perspective of the same event, as well as discussed how writing in the first vs third person point of view can change the telling of a story, and the reader's understanding of it. We have also spent the last couple of weeks working on some test prep. My goal was to expose the kids to as many different types of questions as they might see on the AIR test next week. One of the articles we read as part of our test prep was about the State Quarters and Beautiful Parks coin programs. I pulled out my collections of each of these coin programs, and the kids were intrigued! Thanks so Steve, we were able to complete our State Quarters collection, which students have been working on for over 5 years here at Harman! And many students have brought in Beautiful Parks coins to get that collection started. What a great way to learn about our states and parks! SOCIAL STUDIES UPDATE
Inventors from Ohio were the topic of discussion in SS, as we learned about Thomas Edison, Garret Morgan, Charles Kettering, James Spangler, Granville Woods, Charles Richter, and, of course, the Wright Brothers. We are now into our last SS unit, Economics. Students have learned about the Factors of Production, which we will see in action at our Cassano's field trip in May. We have moved on to learning about savings and budgets. Entrepreneurship is one of the key topics of this unit, and children will get first hand practice with this later this year. On April 25, we will kick off our Market Day project...keep your eyes and ears open for info about this to come home that week! Field trip projects are coming in as well. We have learned about the Underground Railroad in Springboro, the Underground Museum in Cincinnati, Serpent Mound, the Wright Cycle Shop, the Amish, Cincinnati....with much more to come! Students eagerly await each new project and are enjoying learning about all these great places and the fascinating history of Ohio. OPERATION HILLSIDE UPDATE Students are at the synthesis point with this project. They have spent months researching and learning from experts, now it's time to put all that learning together to create a cohesive plan. On Friday, student teams spent time together going through what they have learned and pulling out the big ideas that were important for them to include in their proposals. Opinion pieces will be written in ELA class in the upcoming weeks, and models of the hillside will be created in math/science classes. It's hard to believe that these little people are just one quarter and some summer days away from being fifth graders! We have some action packed weeks ahead, full of new and culminating learning experiences. It's going to be GREAT! GA-gA!Have you heard all about it? Harman little people are loving our new Ga-ga pit! This has inspired a new love of play outside at recess. Our Harman staff is working out the very best way to maximize the opportunity for kids to play, and is developing a common set of rules and language for managing this playground addition. OPPORTUNITES FOR MORE SCIENCE: |
AuthorAnne Kenney Archives
May 2016
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