King's M&M's

Today the students participate in an activity called the King's M&M's. Mr. Evans was, of course, the king and he had 2 elected members of Parliament, as well as 2 very unpopular "tax collectors". Our Parliament members came up with several taxes for our colonists to pay. Some examples were a tax on food (if you had snack this morning), chair color, clothing color, and ribbons in your hair.

The class really enjoyed this activity, once they got passed the part they were going to lose their M&M's. We decided to share our taxes with the entire class when we had finished. I think the class can now see why the colonists were so upset at all the taxing from England.

VA History, Colonization, and an Online Quiz!

Today the students had a pop quiz. We finished up our unit on the Colonization of Virginia and decided to have a pop quiz. The students were not upset by this, because they got to take the quiz online and find out their score immediately! It was a great experience for the kids and great practice...since we will be taking the SOL assessment online in the spring.

Pen Pals

As you may have heard we have we asked to become pen pals with a 3rd grade class this year. A former student's mother is now teaching 3rd grade school at the American International School of Kingston in Jamaica. This is a wonderful opportunity for our students to make a connection/friendship with another person in another part of the world.

Being a teacher, you are always looking for that spark to help you students, especially those resistant to writing. And to be honest you never know what assignment, if any, is going to do that for you. This assignment has been a big hit with many of our resistant writers. Each and everyday someone asks me if they can work on something for their pen pal. We will be sending out the letters early next week.

iPods and the Powhatan

Today some of the students began watching a podcast and completing a graphic organizer on Jamestown and the Powhatan Indians. They were looking for six key features in the information about their food, clothing, tools/technology, recreation/arts, religion, and society.

Even though we are done studying this part of VA history, what a great way to keep them engaged in learning this information.

Smell the Flowers?

Today we did! Besides smelling them, we also dissected some tiger lilies. Since yesterday we began studying about flowers and the parts of a flower today we decided that there is no better way to be able to identify the parts then to get inside one. And that's just what we did. The students were able to identify and remove the petals, sepals, stamen and pistil. After the removed and observed these parts we then added them, literally to our data sheets, and had to describe their function.

The class did an awesome job!

Wordle and Story Summaries?

Today in Literature the class completed summaries of their survival themed books. Rather than simply write a "typical" summary, we used a free web-based program called Wordle to create our "So Far Summary" for our book. The kids had a blast and demonstrated comprehension of the book they were reading.

Spookly the Square Pumpkin

Today we read a book called Spookly the Square Pumpkin. The kids enjoyed listening to the story and hearing about how it's not always a bad thing to be different. There is a great message in this book! And according to the website...they have made the book into a movie. Cool!