2nd Grade Batty Facts Voicethread

Mrs. Vest’s class create a Voicethread on Batty Facts to go with their lesson on facts and opinions. Creating voicethreads on a specific topic gives students a chance to write, practicing reading, and listen back to information, which helps them learn and remember it better. They are also a great way to practice fluency and oral speaking skills. Students are always amazed the first time they hear themselves read, and I always give them the option to redo their reading if they don’t like it. It’s neat to see how quickly their reading changes when they can hear themselves! Take a look at their project (and feel free to leave them some comments).

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Blogging 5th Graders

Mrs. Hudson’s and Mrs. Graves 5th grade classes at Clearbrook Elementary are blogging! I’m so proud of the hard work both the teachers and the students are putting into this project! The kids are very excited, especially about comments they’ve received from some college students in Alabama. They worked really hard on writing posts about instruments to go with the sound unit they are studied in Science, and they are working on entries about their visit to Apple Ridge Farms. If you have a few minutes to leave them some comments, they would love it! It’s so motivating for them to know that their writing is read by a “real” audience!

Here are their blogs:

Mrs. Hudson

Mrs. Graves

I’ll keep them linked to this blog (on the right) in case you want to check back on them later in the year!

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The Fun Theory

I love this concept. People will do harder things if you make it FUN! I just love to see that principle working in classrooms…and I often do!!!

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O.R.E.O.s

First Grade classes around the county participated in an O.R.E.O. project, including Mrs. Chapman’s class, Mrs. Williams’ class, Mrs. Braun’s class, and all of Oak Grove’s First Grade! It was tons of fun, and it all centered around cookies!!

Students stacked cookies to see how tall of a tower they could make before it tumbled and tallied their results. Then, they entered results on a spreadsheet to find a class average and to view a graph. They discussed the data using words like greather than, less than, and equal to (see example below).

Oreo Project Example

Click here for a blank version of the spreadsheet.

Finally, they entered their data into a project database that included data from across the United States, and even a few other countries! To view the project results (including a map of all the participants), click here! Globally, the class average for stacks was 18 cookies!

Here’s a few pictures from the event:
O.R.E.O. Project 2009 on PhotoPeach

Oh…and just in case your wondering, we did NOT eat the ones we stacked! ;)

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Projects, Projects, Projects

This article is a follow up to yesterday’s inservice at Clearbrook. We discussed Global Projects, Using Skype, Wiki Ideas, and Geocaching and Geobugs. Wow, that was a lot of stuff!

Shelia Terry from Virginia Beach was able to skype with us and talk a little about her use with Skype with her students there. She gave us some great information about skype, and send us a link to more Skype info on her wiki!

We also talked a lot about some existing global projects you can join. One of the project places I highlighted was the site by Jen Wagner. I love her projects!!

The other project I mentioned by name was the skype project called Mission 00 Rain about Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I remember that a few of you were interested in it as well. It’s for grades 1-3, but you need to register by Oct. 10!

Finally, we did some geocaching and talked about geobugs. In case you all are interested in geocaching for fun, the geocaching site is www.geocaching.com. You can create an account for free, and download the locations of caches to many types of gps units. The newer ones for cars will even let you do this. It’s tons of fun, and they are EVERYWHERE…so it’s also great for family trips or vacations.

If you and your class want to track the Big Lick Geobug, here’s it’s story.
https://tcoffey.edublogs.org/2009/06/03/geobugs/

Finally, an Oliver K. Woodman Geobug will be leaving Roanoke in the next few weeks. He’s heading to Redcrest, California. If you’ve read the book, The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman, you’ll know why! Let me know if you want me to come to your class, show a geobug, and get your started following him too. :)