March 22, 2013

March Madness!

It's hard to believe that we are almost at the end of March! What a month it has been! Room 13 has been super busy with so many fun and exciting activties.



PARP WEEK
Last week, we finally celebrated Parents As Reading Partners (PARP) Week.  We has so much fun during PARB (Parents As Reading Buddies), when many parents joined our classroom for our daily reading.  All the kids were excited to read with an adult and practice important reading skills during just right reading time. After four nights of reading at home, Team Marsen read a total of 1,371 minutes! Go Marsen Readers!!!!! Last Thursday was the Jester Jim Assembly. The audience was surely engaged in his performance!  Jester Jim created many different beats and tricks that entertained us all.  The highlight was watching Sadie get picked from the audience to juggle.  Way to handle being in the spotlight Sadie!

Scientist of the Week
Maytal "brightened" our classroom last week as Scientist of the Week! She taught the class that when milk, food coloring, and dish soap are combined, at first the food coloring floats on the surface of the milk.  This is because it is less dense than milk.  Then, the dish soap breaks down the fat molecules in the milk, which causes the water that is left in the milk and the food coloring to push out and move around, creating a tie dye design.  Thank you Matal for making this a truly colorful experience!

Skylar's a Winner!

At the Board of Education Meeting last Thursday night, Skylar was honored as one of the winners for the 2013 LIPC Essay Contest. She wrote an essay on "How School Makes Her Feel", and it was truly impressive! Her essay complimented her teachers and principal. We truly had our buckets filled! Thank you Skylar! Click on the link below to hear Skylar read her essay!(Thank you Mr. Sinanis for capturing this very special moment!)
http://youtu.be/zUS5Ax7Elns

We hope everyone has a wonderful "Spring Break" next week!

Enjoy this time with family and friends!

 

March 8, 2013

What a Connection!                        

Everyone knows Room 13 loves their weekly visits to the Cantiague Library on Fridays.  When it came time to learn about "Women in History", Team Marsen had the idea to collaborate with the amazing Ms. Tedesco on a culminating lesson about Ruby Bridges.

The background knowledge started to build when the class read the autobiography Ruby Bridges Goes to School- My True Story and learned of the challenges a young girl faced during the days of segregation.  We learned that Ruby Bridges was the first African-American girl to attend an all white school.  Due to her bravery, African-American children started attending all white schools.  The emphasis of this read aloud was celebrating a change that one female made in our history.

The next step was to read an article about Ruby Bridges that came from Scholastic News entitled "Ruby the Brave", which was an article giving us more information about Ruby Bridges and the struggles and triumphs that stemmed from her bravery.  We used this information to demonstrate our understanding of a text and answer comprehension questions on this topic.

The final puzzle piece was completed when Mrs. Tedesco joined our class for a fun-filled station teaching lesson. The students were broken up into three random groups.  Each group attended each station for approximately ten minutes.   Here is a "snapshot" of what happened in these three stations.

Station #1
Location: Front Carpet
Happenings at this station:
Mrs. Martin guided the children in an exploration of how the article "Ruby the Brave" and the autobiography Ruby Bridges Goes to School- My True Story, were alike and different.  The children were challenged to complete a Venn Diagram with the information ellicted from a book and an article.  Mrs. Martin was TRULY impressed with what the children came up with!                                                 
Findings: 
Students found many things in common from the article and autobiography! Spoiler Alert- they were both Scholastic publications! Ask your child what else they found that were the same in both texts and what was different about each text.

Station #2
Location: Back Carpet
Happenings at this station:
Mrs. Rosen led a discussion on the different non-fiction text features that can be found in an article.  Students were then asked to take a labeled word of a specific text feature and place it where it belongs on the article; "Ruby the Brave".  As each feature (ex. caption, bold text, subheadings etc.) was labeled, the children were asked to think about why it was included in the article and how it helped us to further understand Ruby Bridges and her story.  Bravo to all the children for being true detectives and finding out where the word belonged and why that feature was important in this non-fiction text.
Findings: 
Non-fiction text features help a reader navigate a text and truly understand the author's purpose for including these features.

Station #3
Location: Hallway
Happenings at this station:
Ms. Tedesco greeted the children in the hallway with warm smiles and cool books! She allowed the children to explore other Women in History books. This wonderful experience gave the children time to explore the importance of  specific women and celebrate their accomplishments during "Women in History" month.  They were exposed to texts about women like Michelle Obama, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pocahontas, Anne Frank etc.  The children were asked to reflect on what they learned about their woman in history and what they are still wondering about that person. 

Wow! Can you believe this ACTION PACKED lesson happened in about 45 minutes!!!!!! Talk about making the most of your time!  

Room 13 loves stations!!!!!!!!!!!!

Scientist of the Week- David...."SHINES!"

Last week, Scientist David truly showed us how to be squeaky clean! We learned that vinegar and salt can turn something very dark and dirty (like an old penny) into something clean, shiny, and new!  
Thank you David for demonstrating this amazing experiment!