Collaborative Projects

We love to participate in Collaborative Projects with other classes.

I mentioned a couple of projects earlier in the year here and here.

After much waiting Shoeless and Bark showed up while we were out on Spring Break. These are traveling pets from Projects By Jen. They had been traveling to classrooms around the US since August sharing information about Lewis and Clark.

They arrived from the midwest with some books and a journal with entries from previous classes. We only got a chance to read the first two because it was testing time and the third one was a longer chapter book. The two titles were well suited to compare different text covering the Journey Lewis and Clark.

We also watched a great video on Discovery Education titled Lewis and Clark: Tools for Survival. It gave tons of details about the trip.

After gathering information from various resources the students set to work creating 1st person postcards from the perspective of someone on the journey. They used the PhotoCard by Bill Atkinson app on the iPads.

 

 Here were a couple final products.

Our final one of the year was Picture It - Mondrian with a Twist. Last year was the first year Jen did this project and Monet was the inspiration. This year the picture was inspired by Piet Mondrian's work.

Piet Mondrian portrait

also inspired by Mondrian

 The image was divided into 24 parts. Different classes within a group were assigned one piece to recreate and send to all the other class. The guidelines were that everyone was supposed to make sure only red, blue, yellow, white and black crayons were used. Since ours was a relatively basic piece we got out the rulers and recreated it from scratch using detailed measurements and then we colored them.

The classes ranged from K-6 and they were scattered around North America. When classes sent out their pieces to the 23 other classes in their group they included an information sheet. This sheet included tidbits about class size (and gender breakdown) as well as things they wanted to share about their class and school,

This was our completed picture.

If you would like to see what projects are in the works for next year go to the Projects By Jen Calendar and sign up for the email update. That way you will know as soon as they are posted.

Also, If you would like to join the next Global Read Aloud in the fall click here and sign up. The book for middle grades is Out of My Mind. I just bought it at the Scholastic Warehouse sale but I haven't read it yet.

A few things we have been doing

We have been doing a bunch of things in class over the last month and a half or so that I haven't taken the time to write about.

Here a just a few favorite:

 
The kids loved International Dot Day. They made watercolor dots on paper and we put them in a swirly got frame. Then they made some digital dots using our new iPads. They also helped our first grade reading buddies make dots on the iPads as well as all the kindergarten stuednts in the school. It was a fabulous day.

They enjoyed participating in the annual OREO project. We had some great stackers this year. We figured out our class average and submitted it along with tons of other classes. If you haven't ever done this one before it is great fun. Projects by Jen also hosts a fabulous Holiday Card Exchange in case you might be interested.

Our Student Teacher, Ms. King, Ivan and I

We have been reading The One and Only Ivan as part of the Global Read Aloud project. Unfortunately we got pretty far behind with the schedule so we didn't participate as much as my previous classes have done. They still have been enjoying the book and the activities.

The kids performed their grade level musical, Music and Me,  for the school during the day and then an evening performance for the parents. That did such a great job and I was very proud of them.


Currently we are doing a two week unit about Greek mythology. I will definitely have to share a bit about that soon with some pictures since I forgot that camera at school. The kids are totally loving it.

This week we have our field trip to the Stone Mountain Indian Festival and Pow-Wow. This was a great time last year so I hope it is this year as well.