WWR March 27

from my pinterest board (the link doesn't work)

WWR March 20

from here

WWR March 13

from here

So, I have been incommunicado on the blog lately.

It is report card time.

Enough said.

I handed my reports in yesterday and so am now crawling out from under the report card rock to share class happenings again.

Lately in class we have been doing a lot of reader's response writing. This class does much better at writing when given a topic. Doing free writes is not their forte!

The class has also been doing a lot of thinking and talking and writing using describing words. We are trying to make our writing juicier and more interesting. I am happy to say that some juicier words are starting to pop up in their writing. Yay!

Since I haven't shown any student work for a little bit,  I thought I would share a few samples of the students writing tonight.

Last week, we read a book called A Quiet Place by Douglas Wood and then

the students had to write a response telling me about their quiet places. Here are just a few...

The beach is my quiet place because I like the sound of the waves splashing and relaxing.

My quiet place is on my Mom's lap. It is cozy and my comfy, too. I always sit on my Mom's lap before school and I snuggle on her lap with her and I love her as much as I love you.



Hawaii is my quiet place. It is peaceful and important to my life.

My quiet place is my bedroom because it is cozy. It is quiet.

In the library because it is a good strategy and I like it. It is calm.

My quiet place is when the sun shines in the sky. When I lie on the picnic mat on a big green hill dreaming.

My quiet place is Yosemite Park because it is beautiful and nice.

My quiet place is my bed. When I snuggle up with Bridget and I fall asleep and dream.

 

Ms. Hughes


WWR March 6

from here on etsy

WWR February 27

via here

DI

 

We had our first DI challenge the other day. For those of you who don't know what DI is, it is a program called Destination Imagination that promotes creativity through problem solving. The short version is that the students are given a question to ponder, then a challenge related to the question, a set of supplies and an amount of time in a team to solve the challenge.

 

Our first Destination Imagination day, the question was: What is long?  First, we went around our meeting circle and named things that were long. The answers were as varied as the students. From fallen trees, to skyscrapers if they fell over, to heaven! We talked about thinking outside the box, taking other people's ideas and making them your own (called piggybacking in DI) and then I gave them the challenge.

 

Our first challenge? Build the longest object you can using the supplies given. Students were put in teams of two and given:

3 straws, 3 paperclips, one piece of paper, one toilet paper roll, 3 cardboard circles and one strip of labels.

 

It was really interesting seeing how the different groups worked together, the way that their minds worked and the creations they came up with! I took some photos of the kids at work (sorry that some are blurry a bit - others were too blurry to post! The perils of using a phone camera!) and decided to post them with the circles to hide their faces. The photos lose something in doing this but the anonymity of the students stays intact and that is what is most important to me.

 

 

 
At the end of the DI session, teams got to tell about their thinking and other students got to comment on what they found interesting. I was a bit concerned about the attention span of some of the students but they all did really well. I loved hearing comments like "I think it is interesting the way that you did...." instead of just the usual "It is nice"!

Here are some of the final creations in their many, varied forms:

 

 

This team created an airplane. If this student's parent is looking at the blog,
they will know immediately that their son was on this team. He is airplane mad!!!!

This is a closeup of the end of the one below. I liked how they cut a slit in the circle
to put the strip of paper through because they were out of labels! Thinking outside the box is
what DI is all about!

Another close up from the one above it. Interesting folding techniques on the paper.
 

And I can not say enough about the three parents who came to help me do the lesson. Soon, they will have a chance to be trained in DI instruction and they will lead the lessons while I help them!