ROE Scholastic Book Fair

Celebrate the 100th Day!

Our 100th day of school is January 31st! Here are a few resources with worthwhile learning activities connected to this event:

SMARTExchange: 100th Day (SMART Notebook file downloads)
SMART Exchange is searchable database of notebook files. Filter your search by standard, subject, topic, and grade level. Preview and download files which can be used as is or adapted and customized for your students. 

More Instructional Ideas from...

• Scholastic 
• Read-Write-Think
• Starfall
• BrainPop Jr clip with Teacher & Family Activities
• Splat Squares & Reveal (interactive 100s chart)
• 100th Day: Glogster 

Pinterest: 100th Day Activities Board

More Interesting Reading on Pinterest:

• Pinterest: A Beginner's Guide
• Best Guides to Figuring out Pinterest
• My previous post on Pinterest

1st Grade Projects

1st graders used TuxPaint and Micosoft Word to create these descriptive writing projects as part of their study of communities under the theme 'How We Organize Ourselves.' Click tabs at top to scroll through just a few examples, and click magnifer at bottom left of window to zoom in. These are authentic pieces of 1st grade work, and thus are not perfectly edited. They represent the ongoing development of writing skills with 1st graders.

TuxPaint is a free and families can download it at home too. Students applied touchpad and keyboarding skills. They didn't draw these with a mouse! They also connected back to their earlier study of maps this year in order to create a bird's eye view of the community they wrote about and 'painted.' They used a variety of brush and line sizes, and explored stamps, and 'magic' effects too. 

Adaptations

What do 4th Graders in Ms. Waugh's classroom observe and wonder about how animals adapt physically and behaviorally to their environments? We used these images as a way to introduce and engage students with this concept. Listen and look at this VoiceThread to hear students' comments and discussion about several different organisms. View full screen here & see further project details here. 

Gifts to the ROE Library!

View this clip to find out about the beautiful new books donated to the ROE Library!

Professional Reading

http://www.fluency21.com/handouts_smallbytes.cfm

Blogging & Digital Storytelling:

Blogging in the Classroom: How to Write a Quality Comment

10  Tools for Digital Storytelling in Class (The Whiteboard Blog)

Learning Tools:
 Digital Diet: Downloadable Guides (21^st Century Fluency Project) 
Global Classroom:
 Guide to Globally Connected Learning (Langwitches)
Interesting:
What if the next Steve Jobs is sitting in your classroom right now? (Wanderings)
Become a Gmail Jedi Webinar & Outline (Cory Pavicich)

Online Learning Resources

5th grade students are exploring alternative energies by inquiring into renewable and non-renewable natural resources, sources of energy, and sustainability of energy systems.

Searchasaurus (EBSCO) is proving to be an excellent source of kid-friendly magazine articles for their ongoing portfolio project that documents their readings, discoveries and reflections. As part of the embedded research components, students are required to locate and analyze relevant, current, and readable sources of information.

Click to view 5th Grade-Sharing the Planet + Searchasaurus

Searchasaurus has the capability of easily narrowing searches by format type. Lexile levels for readability are listed next to each article. 5th graders are able to determine immediately whether an article is within a 750-950 range that is typical for grade-level text, or will offer a greater or lesser challenge to them. They can sort by 'Date Descending' (pull-down option at top right of screen) and view articles with most current ones now at top. They are also easily creating citations with the source information readily listed at the top of each article, as well as using Bibme to create citations independently. 

  

Searchasaurus is just one of many excellent online resources available to our students as part of HISD subscriptions. Download or print the brochure above and visit the ROE Library site  for additional options to access high-quality learning resources for students' projects and assignments! (A printed brochure including necessary unpublished passwords will be coming home with students this week).