The Last Day of School

The last day of school was filled with excitement! We started off the day watching a Teacher vs. 6th Grade volleyball game and before we knew it, it was time for our make-your-own-sundae party.

Students enjoyed loading up their bowls with yummy toppings.

Thank you to everyone who sent in toppings for this delicious end to our day! 

Once everyone was finished eating, students signed yearbooks.

I passed out memory books for anyone who didn't have a yearbook so everyone had something to collect signatures.

Then it was time to line the hallway to "clap out" the 6th grade students. There were lots of tears during this bittersweet occasion.

Possibly the most exciting part of the day came when a student revealed that he had heard some of our students mentioned on TV while watching PBS in regards to one of the writing contests we entered this year. We did a little googling and sure enough, we had two third place winners and a first place winner! Congrats to these students and I hope to do a blog post when I get more information! 

The 2014-2015 school year was an incredible one for me, and I will never forget it. Each student played a special role and brought something important to the class. This was a class of eager learners, high achievers and students who were kind, generous, funny and sweet. Through this blog, you now have a permanent record of the amazing 2014-2015 school year. The blog will be archived so you and/or your child can look back at what we did in 1st or 2nd grade.

Project Based Learning and the Scholastic Book Fair

My class turned the school book fair into a Project Based Learning opportunity. We decided our driving question would be, how can we increase attendance at the school book fair? We began this project last October and students have been working in small groups on different parts of the project at various points throughout the school year.

First, we took a vote via Google forms to decide what method or project would be best to answer our driving questions. Creating a commercial won almost unanimously!

The next step was for a small group to work collaboratively writing a commercial script using Google docs. After doing some research, the students found a similar project I did with a class several years ago, took that existing script and revised it. I was impressed by the editing and revision skills of this group.

At the fall book fair, we took some video footage. I worked with another small group using iMovie to edit the footage to create a promo about the book fair. Students took turns reading the script and we added that as a voiceover. Our finished project is below. We hope to see you at the book fair!