Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Such a busy time of year!

We have been super busy this week.  So busy that I need to update my blog by Wednesday!  I just am so excited about our class project that will be presented on Thursday at "Passport to Literacy Night".  The Third grade team was assigned the continent of North America.  With some flexing of language arts units and a lot of creativity, we turned this presentation into a Project Based Learning experience for our students.

First we studied many different types of Traditional Tales noticing that there were similar elements despite the country of origin.  Then we specifically looked at some from North America looking for the cultural influences reflected in the stories.  

The most amazing learning we did was to write our own Cinderella/Fairy tale after learning about a plot diagram.  The draft was written by pairs of students working on specific parts.  Then we used our ARMS writing strategy to revise the story as a class.  That left a day for us to completely illustrate it and it turned out GREAT!  Please come see it Lit night.  After that I'm sure I can find some way to attach it here.

The other huge event this week is the WORLD WIDE Hour of Code.  Writing computer code is a billion dollar industry and a major employment opportunity for our children.  Our class is beginning our Hour on Thursday but they will be able to do additional coding lessons/activities at home.  I believe there is a total of 80 hours available.

When you consider that we have been creating custom maps, writing individual traditional tales, working on multiplication too it is pretty amazing.

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