Twinkie Town Market Days=Mini-Society Success

   On Thursday and Friday of last week we held our market days for students to sell goods or services to the students and families in the school. I am happy to report that Twinkie Town was bustling!  Many of our stores sold out.  It was a huge success.  I want to thank every student for their hard work.  Take a look at this video to see all of the products and services that were taking place at our market days.

Learning The Process of Writing a Book from an Expert!

     Students are very excited to begin their individual research reports on animals.   There are many steps we will be going through to create our reports.  I thought it would be great to hear from an expert on the process of writing before we get started!

     On Friday we had the opportunity to Skype with Mr. Jerry Blumengarten, otherwise known as Cybraryman, about the process that he used while writing several books.  Students were engaged and responsive to all of the information that Mr. Blumengarten shared with us about his process of writing a cartoon booklet about energy.  He also shared pictures of the stages of creating the cartoon book from start to finish using Mixbook.  Students really enjoyed examining the pictures, while also interacting with Mr. Blumengarten about the stages of the book. We also learned a few new vocabulary words along the way!    Thank you Cybraryman for a wonderful learning opportunity!  It is definitely a day the students will not forget!
 http://www.cybraryman.com/index.html

Happy Earth Day!

   In honor of Earth Day, I hope you are doing something special to protect our Earth's resources.  Will you plant a tree, recycle, or begin a garden today?  There are so many things each of us can do!  Set a great example today.   Want to learn more about going green? Wonderopolis has a great post about how you can do this!  You definitely have to check it out! http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/whats-so-great-about-going-green/.  You must also check out Cybraryman's many useful sites about Earth day at http://cybraryman.com/environment.html .   He has so many wonderful sites on how you can make a difference today.  
    Our class had the opportunity to comment on a Voicethread about Earthcast- a 24 hour webcast devoted to  Earth day.  We were so glad we could share our thoughts about what we can do to make a difference!

Animal Research

 Over the next several weeks students will be researching a particular animal that they have chosen.  During this time they will be using at least three resources to gather information. There are so many wonderful resources on the web that we can use to find information.  Please click on the following links below to learn more about an animal.

http://www.cybraryman.com/animals.html
http://animal.discovery.com/animals/ 
http://www.mbgnet.net/
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/animals/creaturefeature/
 http://www.extremescience.com/animal-kingdom.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/
http://www.kidsites.com/sites-edu/animals.htm
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/
http://www.kidsplanet.org/factsheets/map.html
http://www.kidsbiology.com/animals-for-children.php
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/
More Animal Sites!

Welcome Back!

  I hope everyone had a relaxing spring break!  The time went by so fast! It was so nice to see everyone's smiling faces this morning! 
    While there are only 8 weeks of school, we still have so much to do.  We will be getting ready for our Mini- Society Market Days that will take place on the 26th and 27th of this month.  We will also begin our new science unit on Living Organisms- our frogs, snails, and guppies will arrive around May 1st! Each student  will also begin a research project on a particular animal.  
  It is a very exciting to time to learn and grow!  Please stop by often to see all the wonderful things we are working on!

Our Updated Poetry Voicethread With Comments!