First Graders and Magee Celebrate Earth Day!

Every year at Magee we celebrate Earth Day.  We have different presenters come in for each grade level.









For example, Second graders learn about trees and go with their presenter outside to find the different trees.  Fifth graders take the morning and cut brush outside.  First graders learn about prairies and go outside to study the Magee prairie.  It's a really great day organized by one of our fifth grade teachers, Mr. Suhr.





First grade teachers Mrs. Coss and Mrs. Trost wanted their students to learn about Earth Day and the issues related to the day.  They were also writing opinion pieces during writer's workshop.  We thought we could tie the two together!  We started with the students using the database Pebble Go.  Students used the Social Studies database to research Caring for Nature, Cleaning up Litter, Reusing and Recycling, Saving Energy and Saving Water.





They then took all that new information and either wrote their opinion piece or they wrote a persuasive letter to a friend with their opinions.  We then used Google Docs to publish their pieces.  This time we "fancied them up" with different fonts and we used the Research Tool feature to insert a picture.




 Here are a couple of finished products.  They did a great job!  What a great way to celebrate Earth Day!

Mom's Big Catch

Last week Magee had a very special guest visit.  Wisconsin author, Marla McKenna, came to our school!  Ms. McKenna wrote the book, Mom's Big Catch.  Mom's Big Catch is based on the true story of the time Ms. McKenna went to the Brewer game with her family.  I won't give away the ending, but the mom in the story ends up catching a ball in a very unusual way!  The sequel to the book, Sadie's Big Steal, comes out in June.  Sadie is the family's dog.


Marla McKenna met with each grade level for about 40 minutes.  She read the story and talked to the students about how she got the idea, how long it took her to write it and the process of sending it to publishers and having it rejected.  She then told them about the publisher that decided to publish her book and what that process was like.

Ms. McKenna's message to students was to never give up and follow your dreams.  Also, she told them how important it is to be positive.  There were times she was discouraged but she made an effort to choose to be postive through the whole process.  Ms. McKenna talked to students about becoming better writers by using describing and action words and adding emotion to their writing.

Marla McKenna also ate lunch with six of our students.  That was such a fun time!  The students asked lots of questions and Ms. McKenna asked them questions, too!  It was a great day.  We all can't wait to read Marla McKenna's new book, Sadie's Big Steal.

For more information about Marla McKenna, visit her website.

5th Grade Trip to BizTown

5th graders went to JA Biztown this February.  It is sponsored by Junior Achievement of Wisconsin.  Here is a link to their organization.  The following is from their flyer for educators:
       JA BizTown, combines  in-class learning with a day-long visit to  a  fully interactive, simulated town. Students leave understanding the relationship between what they learn in school and their  participation in a local economy.





5th grade teachers Mrs. Behnke and Mr. Suhr wanted their students to create something to share about their day.  We decided to use the web 2.0 tool Narrable.  Narrable allows students to use pictures and their voice to tell a story.  Since the students are so busy at BizTown, Mrs. Behnke and Mr. Suhr took a ton of pictures throughout the day.






         



After they got back we put all of the pictures taken that day onto a drive that all students had access to.  Mrs. Behnke had the students use a prompt she created to have them start thinking about how they would describe the day to other 5th graders in a newspaper article.  The prompt is linked here.  After that was done, students started going through the pictures and using this planning sheet, picked pictures they wanted to use to describe their day.







After their planning, students started putting their Narrable together and recordering their voice.  I created a Google site as a place to display all of their Narrables.  Click here to view their stories.  They did a really nice job.