We are Authors!

This semester our 3rd graders have been busy writing their own stories and poetry. Students worked in pairs and individually to express an interesting story or inspiring poetry. They also added to their writing by including some original artwork. Have a look at their final products below.

As a culminating activity, we had a Skype chat with our new friends in Ms. Anderson's class in Minnesota. They showed us a poetry skit they had made about their interpretation of the poem,"I Found a Four-Leaf Clover" by Jack Prelutsky. Have a look at our Rocketeers sharing their work below. 

Novel Trailers

As a culminating project, our 6th grade Rocketeers created some iMovie Trailers for the novel, The Giver. Students had two options for their project: 1) Create a trailer to summarize the novel or, 2) Create a sequel to the novel. Our Rocketeers put their creativity skills to the test and opted for the sequel. Check out our final products below!

Group 1: Alissa & Christian 

Group 2: Michael & Alexandria 

Group 3: Josiah, Zoey & Zacch 

Which trailer was your favorite? Which one would you (if given the chance) watch and why? 

We would love to hear your comments! 

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Mr. Robert Scruggs, our district instructional technology specialist, for teaching us iMovie and providing support and feedback throughout our project. We had a blast, Mr. Scruggs! 

Culture Day 2012

Last week our school hosted its Second Annual Culture Day.  Each year we host this event to explore and celebrate diversity in our school and around the world.  The event included guest speaker presentations by international students along with two variety shows with student-led performances and presentations.  So it comes to no surprise that our 4^th and 6^th grade Rocketeers have been busy as bees this semester! They took on the task of preparing introductions for our performances, serving as helpers (who took pictures and escorted speakers to their designated classrooms) during the classroom presentations, and even preparing a performance of their own! Check out clips of our show below.

Overall, our Rocketeers did an amazing job of multitasking. They got the chance to see the ins and outs of preparing and planning for a school-wide event. The event and day was a huge success!

Global Mystery Skype Challenge

Last week our 5th graders had their very first Global Mystery Skype Challenge. The objective of the call was to ask yes/no questions about location (i.e. directions, latitude, longitude, Equator, etc.) to determine where our partner class is. If the class answered yes to one of our questions, we were able to ask a follow- up question. But if they answered no, then our turn was up and we had to answer their questions. Although the rules are simple, the task itself was a lot more difficult than we expected!

To help us narrow down our partner class' location, we had assigned Skype jobs throughout the call. Here are some examples of our jobs:

1. Greeters & Inquirers- These students were responsible for greeting our class and asking our questions.
2. Map Keepers- These students had atlases and Google Maps available to narrow down the location based on clues.
3. Question Keepers- These students kept careful track of the questions asked and reported these to the Inquirers.
4. Logical Reasoners- These students were responsible for listening to the clues given and putting the pieces together to determine the exact location. They worked with the Question Keepers to construct questions.
5. Runners- These students were messengers who shared clues, questions, or tips between the Map Keepers and the Logical Reasoners. They also were responsible for giving the Inquirers our class' questions.

One of our Map Keepers hard at work. 

We worked as a team! 

Overall, this was perhaps one of the toughest Skype calls we ever had! We were thrilled when we guessed that our partner class was in Ontario, Canada! However, we got stuck trying to determine the exact city they were in. Although we were in the correct area, we figured out that we were too far south. Our friends did an awesome job of guessing where we were in the end. Since this call took longer than expected, we only got a few minutes to ask questions about ourselves. We hope that we can reconnect with our friends in Canada and thank them for taking the challenge with us!

Chatting with our new friends! 

Freckle Juice, Recipes, and More!

This semester our 2nd graders have been busy reading the novel, Freckle Juice by Judy Blume. We have also been working on some fun projects along the way. Have a look at some ways we have brought our story to life.

1. Recipe Fun 
In the story, the main character Andrew comes across a strange recipe that he thinks will give him what he really wants: Freckles! After making our own silly recipes we also made some yummy recipes of our own in class. Some our recipes included peanut butter squares, chocolate milk, ants on a log, and apples with caramel.  Have a look at us preparing our tasty creations below.

We are busy making our apples with caramel! 

Our apples look yummy! 

2. Life Size Character Posters

We thought the characters in Freckle Juice were hilarious! And since we just couldn't get enough of them, we had to create some posters to bring them to life! For this project, we explored different character traits such as thoughts, feelings, actions, dialogue, and physical descriptions. But the challenge was to justify and find examples of these traits in our novel. Have a look at our masterpieces!