Monday, February 15, 2016

Book Projects

We've been reading so many books this school year. I started out the year doing Literature Circles, which ended up being a huge success. My students actually really enjoy doing them, but I wanted to change things up a little.

I decided to do Book Reports and Book Projects. Students were given a choice on what kind of project they completed for their book. Some of the project choices were creating a shoebox diorama, writing yourself into the story, and creating a scrapbook among many others.

I was so impressed with the projects my students did. They put a lot of their creativity into their projects, and they loved being given a choice. Here are a few of my favorites:



Three students from our Hatchet group decided to create Scrapbooks. They had to pretend they were the main character, Brian, creating the scrapbook by including pictures or items that were from the story. 




In our Islands of the Blue Dolphins group students decided to make a shoebox diorama depicting a scene from the story. 
In this scene, a tsunami is on its way to the island!
In this scene, Karana has just lost her brother to the wild dogs and realized she was truly alone and could not stay in her village. She burned all the huts, and left when everything was turned to ash. 


Students in the Charlotte's Web group decided to make a model of a character and write about them! They used modeling clay and painted. 


 Not pictured were the chapters from Hatchet that students wrote to put themselves into the story. I really enjoyed all the projects. They were all incredible and made me realize just how talented my students truly are.

Time Flies When You're Grading Papers!

Wow! I can't believe how much time has gone by since my last post. I've had so many ideas for posts since then, and took a ton of pictures in my classroom but I just have not been able to sit at my computer. Luckily, today is an extra day off of school (President's Day) and I have tons of time!

A lot has been going on in Room 12! Since November we had our Winter Concert, Spelling Bee, and Science Fair on top of everything else we do in the classroom.

Students in third through sixth grade participated in our Science Fair. They were given a planning packet in early December, and had weekly due dates until the day of the Science Fair on February, 5th.

We were very fortunate to have four wonderful judges from the local high school. These judges were all seniors taking AP science classes. They were all very impressed with our students and when it came time to deciding on our winners, they had a hard time!

After much deliberation, they selected four projects. Overall, it was a great Science Fair and I can't wait to see what my students do next year.