Newsela, Google Slides, Short Reports, and a Party

It’s hard to believe that we just set our clocks forward to get ready for spring and then had a snow afternoon on Monday and delay on Tuesday, but such is March weather in Richmond, I suppose!  Mrs. Stearns was the best prepared of us all!

This week we really beefed up our access to technology this week with the addition of digging into Newsela (link found on our Clever homepage) and Google Slides.  Newsela is a site full of age and reading level appropriate news articles meant to give students a broader point of view, a chance to interact with me through annotations of the articles, and a chance to add to their own vocabulary with a personal word wall.  If they haven’t shown you this at home yet, ask them to see it!  We have also been creating a Google Slide presentation to accompany our short reports we have been working on for the past three weeks.  This was really just something extra, but they have loved being able to find pictures and share their knowledge in a more interactive way.  Ask them to log on to their google account at home and they can share their slide with you by e-mailing it to your e-mail address!

   

For some old school writing, I had to show off Miss Tori’s writing this week.  In small group reading, her group read a book about the forming of the Constitution and all that was going on around that time.  In the book, there was a beautiful painting of the delegates all gathered around what seemed to be the signing of the Constitution, so I challenged them to be news reporters.  They had to report back to their readers, who couldn’t see what they were seeing, what was going on in the “room where it happened.”  While all the information might not be correct, Tori’s writing evokes great emotion and anticipation.  All the writing in that group was outstanding.  Well done!

On Friday, using the official Maybeury podium, we shared our short reports with our classmates and Mr. Fernald for a bit.  We discussed what it means to speak loudly in front of a group, making some eye contact, enunciating clearly, and not rushing through so everyone can enjoy all our hard work!  They did phenomenally!  I caught two reports on video, so be sure to check those out below.

  

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The sun was out and we were protected from the wind on Friday, so out to the garden we went for our lesson, where we talked about weeding the garden to get it ready for spring planting!  We also had a delicious kale, spring lettuce, carrot, and snow pea salad at the end.  Thanks to our farmers for always having a great lesson in store for us!

    

Finally, this weekend was the Mallard Auction where parents and teachers get to raise money and morale for the students we love so dearly.  I had such a great time and I can’t wait until next year.  Check out all the fun we had!  I hope you all had a great weekend!

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