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.