What's Your Opinion?

What's your favorite restaurant? Have you ever thought about the reasons why you love this place? What about your favorite book or book series? What made you keep turning the pages? These are the types of questions our fifth grade writers pondered as they worked through their first writing project.

During the past month and a half, our fifth grade writers have been working on opinion writing projects. As part of our state standards, students should be able to share and support their opinions of texts and other topics. Students in Mrs. Sowers' writing classes have been doing just that! By writing either a book review or a restaurant review, students shared their opinions and supported those opinions with strong reasons.

To guide students through the process of developing their ideas for this project, Mrs. Sowers has worked with students on idea development, organization, sentence structure, and word choice through mini-lessons. After each mini-lesson, students headed to writers' workshop to write. At the end of workshop time, students shared with their friends the writing they worked on during workshop.

As all writers do, students worked through the writing process for this project. Students went through the following steps throughout this project:

        The Writing Process

              1. Prewriting

              2. Drafting

              3. Revising

              4. Editing

              5. Publishing

              6. Reflecting

Not only did students publish a writing piece, but each student was to have a hand in the creation of a technology project for publishing as well. Some of the media may have included: podcasts, blog posts, Windows Movie Maker, Photo Story 3, and Microsoft PowerPoint. Students gathered information, photographs, and research about their topics to create their media presentations. Each student learned about technology through this process and how to publish writing in a new and creative way.

As you will see, there was a great deal of time and effort behind these writing projects. Each child worked diligently to complete their writing piece and technology project through collaboration with teachers and peers. Students have taken great pride in their creations and would like to share them with an audience. Thank you for taking the time to visit the blog to see what they have done. Mrs. Sowers hopes you will enjoy the final products as much as she has enjoyed assisting students through this process. Who knows. . . Maybe as a result of their hard work you will be influenced to pick up a good book or visit a new restaurant!  Happy reading, listening, and viewing!

"You Can't Catch Me! I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

Our class enjoyed this week's fairy tale, The Gingerbread Man. Students listened to several different versions of the story and even acted out the story with masks. We also enjoyed a taste test of different kinds of gingerbread cookies and made a graph of our favorites to share our opinions.

Book Character Day

Our class enjoyed Book Character Day for Read Across America. Check out all of our wonderful characters!

Where are my Animal Friends? Reader's Theatre

Our first grade students were reading a script in their reading series this week called, Where are my Animal Friends?. They enjoyed putting together a production of a play for our kindergarten students, teachers, and a few parents. They planned and created the backdrop for the play, masks for each character, and practiced their parts this week. It was so much fun. Then, on Friday they put on the play for an audience.



our cast of characters

 

our narrator

 

our set and production crew

Drama is a part of our Common Core Standards and we try to introduce these standards even at the kindergarten and first grade level. By attending plays such as the ones we've been to earlier this year and putting on plays such as this, students are not only being exposed to the content, but experiencing the content. This type of learning is more meaningful for students. This will be an activity they will look back on and remember when they put on a play for the kindergarteners and other audience members.

Evan's Apple Orchard

 



Apples, apples, everywhere! It was a wonderful day for a field trip on Friday to Evan's Apple Orchard.

Students started out learning about apples at the orchard during an apple talk. We learned about different types of apples, how they make cider, and about the orchard.

The tractor ride around the orchard was fun. Students enjoyed seeing the different kinds of apples they grow, the pumpkin patch, and the great views of the orchard.

Students saw where they make apple cider and got to taste some delicious cider. They loved it!

Then, the children were able to view and feed the animals at The Barnyard. That brought some smiles to their little faces. After that, we cleaned up and had a nice picnic lunch in the picnic area.

And their favorite part of the day was enjoying the awesome playground. We got to slide down the huge slide, race ducks, play in the hay maze, ride mini tractors, and much more! They had a blast!

 

 

This will be a day the children will always remember. Thank you to all of the parents that were able to attend and help out throughout the day.

C.M.E. Walk-A-Thon

Our Walk-A-Thon fundraiser was a success! Our school raised over $20,000. AMAZING! Way to go, Clays Mill!

 

 

Children had a wonderful time walking around our track this afternoon. Chick-Fil-A made it out the the event and we even had a D.J. playing music during the walk. Our class carried a class flag with pictures the children drew of themselves pasted on both sides. The kids loved waving this flag during our walk. Many different children were carrying the flag during our six lap walk.

We wore our "Cat"ch me. . . if you can Walk-A-Thon T-shirts and enjoyed walking together as a class. As we crossed the finish line, we took a class picture. Look how excited they were to cross the finish line.

After the walk, our class danced to the music our D.J. played and had a great time together. Our class is the best!



Thank you to all of our classroom parents who volunteered to help make this event a success and to all of the donations you collected. This fundraiser will really help our school this year.

Welcome Back to School!

The CME Back to School Bash is tonight from 5:30-8:00. Come to room 519 to visit Mrs. Sowers, drop off supplies, then head on down to the cafeteria for a hot dog, and have some fun. Hope to see everyone there!