ELP Mo. Valley

The 5th Grade ELP (extended learning program) students are organizing The Giving Tree project for MV Elementary.  We will be collecting items for the Harrison Co. Food Pantry between December 4th and December 18th.  Last year's group collected 686 items and our goal for this year is 700!  Please help us reach our goal.  Items most needed are:  paper towels, toothbrushes and toothpaste, peanut butter, cereal, oatmeal, canned veggies and fruit, spaghetti and spaghetti sauce, Jell-O and pudding cups, toilet paper and macaroni-n-cheese.  Thank you for helping us help others.  5th Grade ELP Giving Tree Project 2012---Help us make this year even better!  

Dear Parent(s), The school year is moving right along.  It is hard to believe it is already November and Thanksgiving is just around the corner.  The students and I want to take time to update you on classroom happenings: 1st Grade--The ELP students meet with me 1 day a week (so far) for 30 minutes and we are working on a Thanksgiving Reader's Theater called "A Plump and Perky Turkey".  They are doing a great job with vocabulary and fluency (reading with phrasing and expression).  We will share out with the 1st grade classrooms the week of Nov. 25th. 2nd Grade-- "Pippi Longstocking" is making quite an impression on the 2nd grade students.  We are learning about character traits, figurative language and visualization.  Each student is creating illustrations and captions for the chapters using his/her visualization skills.  Pippi is quite a character! 3rd Grade-- ELP students are extending their study of Native Americans, which is the current Social Studie

Missouri Valley Community Schools are having Parent/Teacher Conferences this week.  They will be Tuesday, Oct. 22 and Thursday, Oct. 24th from 3:00-7:00.  Middle School and Elementary students have scheduled conference times.  Please check with your child regarding their assigned time or call the school for information.  5th Grade ELP students have created models of Camp Green Lake, based on the setting described in "Holes" by Louis Sachar.  Please check the display case for the models.  The final products are very creative! 4th Grade ELP students are beginning a Service Learning Project to help the Ronald McDonald House.  We are collecting pop tabs as an Elementary School.  Currently our school has collected 725,500 pop tabs!!  If we are a school that collects 1 MILLION pop tabs there will be a special prize awarded and our efforts will be recognized.  Please check with a 4th grade ELP student for more details.  Finally, as the largest population of students I work wit

Hey 6 th grade parents! We have been reading a novel named Maniac Magee written by the Newbery award-winning author, Jerry Spinelli! We just finished reading it about a week ago, and have been doing some projects to go with it. Right now we are doing power points using things that happened in the book. Your student and his/her classmates have also been listening to a book called The Best Worst School Year Ever , written by Barbara Robinson. We also have just finished that book as well, and will being doing some projects with this book to! Last and certainly the favorite, we will be eating mini pizzas and butterscotch krimpets on Friday, October 18 th . We will be doing this because in our most recently read book Maniac Magee the main character Jeffery “Maniac” Magee, is allergic to pizza and his favorite food is butterscotch krimpets. Each student will be bringing a pizza topping for the entire class. The krimpets will be provided by Mrs. Christensen. We hope that your st

ELP 6 TH GRADE In ELP we are reading a book called Maniac Magee . Maniac Magee is about a boy whose parents died and then ran away from his aunt and uncle. Coming up We will be having a pizza party Thursday, October 17 th . The reason why is because in the book Maniac Magee Maniac is allergic to pizza and won a year’s supply of pizza also we will be tasting butter scotch krimpets. Thanks for reading our blog!!!!     Raine King

5th Grade creating "Camp Green Lake" from Holes . Teamwork is critical to creating......  4th Grade vocabulary charades---acting out the word "baffled" Kindergarten working on matching lowercase and uppercase letters and beginning sounds.  4th Grade---working on character traits in the computer lab. 4th Grade Solar System power points connected to Science curriculum.

ELP (extended learning program) is off and running again.  We have "tweaked" the format slightly but the big ideas are still the same:  build on literacy skills, higher order thinking and small group differentiation.  Below are a few of the topics we are covering so far:  2nd Grade:  Using "Take Me Out of the Bathtub and Other Silly Dilly Songs" students are practicing fluency, phrasing, reading/singing with expression and building on being flexible with vocabulary skills.  We will be using a Bruce Lansky poem "What I Found in my Desk" to create our own silly dilly poems.  3rd Grade:  ELP students are connecting to the "Big Idea" in Science (plants and animals depend on one another) to learn more about the Rainforest ecosystem.  We created replica Rain Forest layers, practiced and shared a Reader's Theater based on "The Great Kapok Tree" and worked on vocabulary such as, deforestation, greenhouse gases and biodiversity.  4th G

Below are a few photos from 4th Grade ELP.  We read the fiction book "How to Eat Fried Worms" and then students created their own "worm experience".  The culminating activity was to write a personal narrative about the experience.  All student photos and narratives are posted on the bulletin board in the lower level hallway of the Elementary.  Connor--"The toppings are great.  The worm, aka, a hotdog, aren't so tasty." Millie--"Do I really have to try this?"  Peyton--"The toppings will make me forget the worm is on the bun."   Dani--"Oh I hope the gummy worms and ice cream make me forget about the other worm."  Zack--"I can't wait to give this worm experience a try!"

The 6th Grade ELP students have been doing a literature study with the novel "The Cat Who Went to Heaven" by Elizabeth Coatsworth.  The setting in ancient Japan, so we have done research about ancient Japanese culture, the ancient art of Origami and how karma plays a key role in many cultures.  The pictures below are from an Origami lesson we worked on.  Students were to follow 7 written directions to create an Ancient Samurai Helmet (since the Japanese believed paper has a spirit, it was considered ill-will to cut or tear or cause harm to the spirit of the paper.....thus paper-folding became important).  We hope you enjoy seeing their "artwork." Kinley M. also brought in an example of her name written in Japanese.  Students played a game with the Kana chart and attempted to write basic nouns in Japanese. 7th grade ELP students creating raccoon tracks to extend the learning from the novel "Where the Red Fern Grows".  Teamwork was key to having

The 5th Grade ELP students and I would like to say a great big "Thank you" to all who participated in The Giving Tree project.  What a great way to build community connections.  The support was overwhelming! The 3rd quarter is in full swing and I wanted to take a minute to share what ELP has been doing since Winter Break.  So here we go...... The 1st and 2nd grade students meet for ELP two times a week (hopefully, depends on weather and schedules).  Our focus has been on adding vocabulary to our reading and writing.  Over the past few weeks we have used a snowball/snowman theme to build synonyms into our repertoire.  We read aloud, "The Biggest Snowball Ever" and then created a "Blizzard of Synonyms" with hand-made snowflakes.  Pictures will be added later.....so, stay tuned.  The 3rd grade students had been studying Native American tribes, their cultures and habitats for Social Studies.  To enhance the learning, we created a Native American folder a

      Missouri Valley students have been collecting food for the Harrison county food pantry. In the past two  weeks we have have gathered more than our goal of five hundred (500). We have 636 items!  Whoever participated, thank you for your help. By 5th grade ELP. Nick, Noah, Morghan, Maddy, Caitlynn, Brianna, Ashlyn, Kimberlyn, Kinsey, Emma, Raine, Kellen.