November Happenings with ELP at the Elementary

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 Studies "big idea".  We are studying 4 tribes from 4 different regions of the US and we are learning about how cultures and traditions are impacted by location, habitats and resources.  The 4 tribes are:  The Tlingit of the NW coast, the Sioux of the Great Plains, the Iroquois of the NE coast and the Maidu of the mountain area in CA.  Students will share out their completed projects with the classrooms.

4th Grade--Our current focus has been the service learning project for the Ronald McDonald House.  Students created posters for the hallways, wrote notes to send home with students and will be going into classrooms to define the pop tab collection and tell about the Ronald McDonald House and why our pop tab collection will help the effort. 

5th Grade--Friday, November 22nd is the 5th Grade Character Education Assembly and our ELP students have been asked to create/write the opening activities for the assembly.  The focus will be on Respect and on Thankfulness.  Students are creating very cute, honest and educational comic strips, posters, acrostic poems and Reader's Theater scripts for sharing out.  I can't wait to see how the final projects come together. 

As always, thank you for your on-going support, cooperation and patience.  What a great year we are having!

Mrs. C.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to ELP

Welcome to the  ELP (Extended Learning Program) at the Mo. Valley Community Schools.  I am excited to be delving into the learning behind ELP and helping students to grow as learners, readers, problem solvers and citizens. As part of the ELP learning this school year, students will be creating/editing and posting information for the blog.  We will work on updating the blog in small groups and individually.  Our goal is to update the blog at least 2X's a month.  Hopefully, with the students' guidance, we will be able to update more frequently about ELP happenings, lessons and objectives. Our first ELP undertaking will be a project revolving around the Olympics.  Students will be researching the Ancient Olympics and Modern-day Olympics.  We will be utilizing both on-line resources and teacher supplied materials.  Students will be expected to be able to compare and contrast Ancient and Modern-day Olympics.  We will work individually and in s...
Read more

The Ancient Olympics and Modern-Day Olympics

I'm not sure about you, but the London Summer Olympics 2012 captivated my attention and the attention of the oldest 2 daughters in our household.  While preparing for the school year, I kept coming back to the topic of The Olympics........ For the past 2 weeks, the ELP students have been focusing on learning about the Ancient Olympic games, held for over 2,000 years in Olympia, Greece.  We have also studied the re-birth of the Olympics in modern times, beginning in 1896.   The 3rd grade students have been practicing a Reader's Theater about Jesse Owens and the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany.  In partners, they have created a story map retelling the story of Jesse Owen's Olympic feats.  They will be sharing the Reader's Theater with the other 3rd grade classrooms. The 4th grade ELP students have read non-fiction texts comparing the Ancient Greek games with Modern events in the Olympic Games.  As a culminating activity they have worked on Ki...
Read more

Mock Election 2012

The 5th-7th Grade ELP students will be participating in the National Student Mock Election, hosted by the Pearson Foundation.  Students will be delving into how our democratic government came to be, why there are 2 "major" political platforms.....in the days of George Washington there was only 1 political party, and then "casting their votes". The objectives of the activities are to increase student understanding of how the election process works, why voting is key to the success of our political system and to guide them in looking for pros/cons to campaigns and campaign strategies. For additional information, please visit:   http://www.nationalmockelection.org I'm looking forward to integrating political science, social studies and language arts with this series of lessons. Please contact me if there are questions or suggestions.  As always, thanks for the on-going support and cooperation. Mrs. C.
Read more