Pumpkin Seed Friday!

To help students use technology as a tool for their learning, we work with schools across the country (and sometimes the world!) on various projects during the year. Our first collaboration was Pumpkin Seed Count 2010. We integrated language arts, science, social students and math to learn about pumpkins and then counting the seeds inside our pumpkin.

First, we created estimates based on our knowledge of how pumpkins grow and comparing the size of our pumpkin with those of other students across the country. We each made an estimate and then averaged a class estimate of 446 sees. Then, we began counting. By estimating and then counting we are working on number sense. Some students quickly recognized that by placing seeds in groups of 10, it was easier to get an accurate count. Some counted by one's, some by two's, some by five's and some by ten's. Some groups did several counts and discovered easier ways than counting by one's. Here are our results:

Create your own digital ecard

We also participated in a school-wide PBIS celebration: the most students reading poetry at one time:

Writing Fun!

Enjoy a story by Frankie!

Click on Student Writing to right and it will take you right to a story written by our very own Frankie!

Mystery Reader!

Savannah's dad came in today as a Mystery Reader! Savannah was VERY surprised. Thank you for taking time out of the day to read to our class....we LOVED it!



If you would like to be a mystery reader, just send me an email or a note and we'll get it set up!

We also had an opportunity to go the computer lab. We used KidPix to make patterns:

Mystery Reader!

We had our first mystery reader on Tuesday: Mrs. O'Brien...our favorite principal!!!!

Mrs. O'Brien read Those Shoes. We were able to share our thinking and how we are learning about metacognition: thinking about our thinking.

Thank you, Mrs. O'Brien!






If you would like to be a mystery reader, just send me an email or write a note! We LOVE surprises!

Setting a Record!

Friday afternoon the entire school went outside to set a record: the most Lowrie students blowing bubbles at one time:

Growing Readers and Writers

We are growing as readers as we learned more about how Reading is THINKING! We made a reading pizza. The pizza crust represents just reading the words: bland. But, when we add our thinking, the pizza toppings, we get flavor and excitement. We enjoy the pizza...our reading.

Students continue to write in their response logs to track their thinking each day.

We had 2 practice fire drills today as well.

Leaving Tracks of our Thinking!

Students all have a reading response journal to leave "tracks of their thinking" each day as they read. Today we learned more about what a read reader is as we learned about checking for understanding.

We also had our annual bus evacuation drill today.

This week students will be meeting with me to set academic and social goals. We have our class goals for each academic area as well as a social goal of walking quietly in the hallway. We're on our way!