Vocabulary by Arabella

In writing, we have these special words like grit and charred and lots of others. We have hand motions for the words. We have lots of different hand motions. We get a lot of new words and when Mrs. Mills or Mrs. Barnett don't know hand motions for the word, it's up to the students to come up with them, which happens a lot. A student came up with the hand motion for grit. 

Sometimes we play this game for the words during snack where someone does the motion and people guess what the word is that goes with that motion. The student doing it for the class calls on a person who knows the answer. This game is really fun. We get to play it a lot.

If you want to see some of the words, watch my video. There will be two people in the video with me. We are going to say the word and do the motion. We're going to say the word first and then do the motion and describe the word. So please watch the video :)!

Note from the teachers: in the video above, Arabella, Allie, and Alex demonstrate the motions for some of our vocabulary words.

Stock Market Club by Wyatt

Every Wednesday at recess I have Stock Market Club. We usually have Stock Market Club in the computer lab, but sometimes it's in Mrs. Dougherty's room. Mrs. Dougherty runs Stock Market Club.

The first thing we do in Stock Market Club is make our group. You can choose to be with anyone. Then you start to buy stocks. Stocks are companies like McDonald's, Disney, and UPS. After you pick your stocks, you try to win.

If you're in first or second place, you get to go to a lunch. At the end of Stock Market Club we get a pizza party. I think that's fun. So anytime you see a Stock Market Club or game, you should try them out.

Here's the website we use during Stock Market Club: http://www.stockmarketgame.com.

Mayhem Poets Assembly by Dylan

We were sitting comfortably in our seats watching the Mayhem Poets make us laugh. They were making us laugh more and more every second. At the end they asked some people to come up for a one word poem. It was funny because they sometimes messed up.

After we went back to the classroom everybody was talking about the Mayhem Poets. "Let's do a one word poem," I exclaimed. While we were doing that I noticed that everyone around us was doing it, too. Cool, I thought.

This assembly was very important because it taught us that poetry can be written in more than one way.

Visit the Mayhem Poets website for more info: http://mayhempoets.com/ .

Baseball Multiplication by Connor

I think that math games are very fun. My favorite one is Baseball Multiplication. It is very fun.

One person puts their guy on home and the pitcher puts down cards. If the product of the cards is 1-21, it's an out. Other products are a single, double, triple, and home run. Win points and play.

Note from the teachers: in the video above, Connor and Dylan demonstrate how to play an inning of Baseball Multiplication. This game can be played at home in the Family Game Kit!

Independent Projects by Bridget

Independent projects are all about, well, you can do anything. You can do comics, interviews, plays, and stories. We do them during writing and it's super fun.  You get to talk and talk about what you are doing.

I am doing an interview and it is fun. I walk around and ask people questions.

First, you get a proposal and fill it out. These are some of the things we do on a proposal. First, you write what genre and topic you will do then you write how you will use your writer's notebook. After that you write what your mentor text will be then you write when you will be done. And that's how to do an independent project.

Note from the teachers: the video above was created by Bridget to showcase some of the independent project work going on in our room.

Six Word Essays

Last week we published and celebrated our essays. Part of our celebration included writing our essays as six word essays, inspired by Ernest Hemingway's six-word memoir.

Writing our essays in six words was challenging. It required us to do the hard work of determining importance and synthesis of several week's worth of writing.

How to do Brain Breaks by Bryn

We do brain breaks when we need to calm down. Brain breaks are a fun way to calm down.

We do brain breaks when we get too loud.

Brain breaks are easy to do. For example, if you do yoga, you will know what the tree pose is. It's when you put one of your legs to your knee and put your hands above your head.

My favorite brain break is a one minute dance party. It's when your teacher plays music and you dance. At the end, you always hear, "Awww."

In the video above, Bryn demonstrates and explains some of our brain breaks.