Creativity Festival

A group of sixteen fifth and sixth grade students accompanied me to the Creativity Festival. This event is held at the Science Museum of Minnesota and is sponsored by Success Beyond the Classroom.

Students had a great day filled with new experiences.  Each students participated in three classes led by experts in their fields.  Offerings included:
Graphic Novel Illustration
Talking Through Silence (Mime)
Watercolor Painting
Arctic Exploration
Sketch Up Computer Animation
Improv
Step 101
Unpredictaball
Cell Lab
Theater Workshop
Body Percussion

Academic Extracurricular Activities

The Resource Room sponsors several extracurricular activities.  These are the activities that have or will soon begin.

Young Rembrandt's Art Classes--Every Thursday, a group of students in grades 1-4 meet for the class "Dazzling Cartoons".  This class meets eight times and has been producing some fabulous artwork.

Junior High Math Team--Nine dedicated mathematicians in grades 7-8 have started preparing for the Math Counts competition this winter.  There is still room so if your child would like to join, let me know.

Fifth Grade Math Masters--This group is gearing up to begin meeting before school beginning October 23.  They will compete in the regional competition in April and also have some fun meets with other Catholic schools at Saint Ambrose in Woodbury.  There is still room to join this group as well.

Destination Imagination--Teams have been formed  in grades 3-8 and will begin meeting in the next few weeks to begin working on picking and solving their challenges.  I love this program since the students do all the problem solving and creating of the solutions.

Battle of the Books--Students in grades 5-8 have had their first lunch-time meeting to peruse the ten titles for this year's competition.  The books are flying off the shelf and we have a record number of participants with more students joining daily.  Way to read!

Writing with Legos

I was graciously invited to come into the fifth grade classrooms to teach them how to use the new Lego Story Visualizer Kits. Mrs. Skold and I teamed up to combine the Lego kits with a writing project.  The students eyes lit up at the chance to use the Legos to create a story!  Everyone was focused and hard at work!

Groups of students received a bucket of specialized Legos to create story scenes.  They used a random spinner to add an element of surprise into the Lego blocks and accessories that they used in their story.  After brainstorming the story, they created scenes for a story map using the Legos.  Next, they took pictures and used an iPad program to write and illustrate their tales. 


One class wrote stories about standing up for a cause or a group. The students in the other class were given the task of creating a story based on a basic human right. This was the focus of their first unit in their reading curriculum.  Below are some of the stories.

This was a great introduction to these Lego Kits.  We already have a few more ideas for expanding the use of these kits in the future.

http://iphone.childrenslibrary.org/cgi-bin/view.py?b=mvphdq7w7zgj756xlvng

http://iphone.childrenslibrary.org/cgi-bin/view.py?b=x4i4wvmxyqnshz5w7vys

End of Week One

The first week of school has flown by.  Resource Room activities this week included work on getting the some of the extra-curricular activities in motion. 

Math
Highland Catholic School will again offer Math Masters teams for students in fifth and sixth grades.  Seventh and eighth grade students will have the opportunity to compete in the Junior High Math League with neighboring schools.  This involves a series of five competitions.  An additional team will also compete in the Math Counts competition.

Reading
Three years ago, Battle of the Books began at Highland Catholic School.  I will once again be offering this reading incentive program.  All fifth-eighth grade students are invited to participate.  Teams are formed at each grade level and everyone busily reads their division's titles. In May,, the competition is held and teams are quizzed about the books. Winning teams are determined at each grade level and then the winning teams from fifth and sixth grade face off as do the winning teams from seventh and eighth grade.  This is a fun event for everyone.  Last year, we had team colors, cheers, songs and more.

Art
Young Rembrandts is now accepting registrations for after school drawing classes.  These will begin in early October.

Destination Imagination
This is a creativity and problem solving competition that has teams of seven students completing a challenge, creating a skit and performing their solution.  Team managers and team members are currently being recruited.  The challenges this year look fabulous.

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to school!  Although the weather is certainly not feeling crisp and autumnal, the calendar is showing that it is time for class, learning, fun, adventure and friends.  I am looking forward to an exciting year in the Resource Room.  I have developed many new units for the Resource Room and kept a few of the "old favorites".  I do think it is fun to explore new topics--I often learn as much as the students do.

Math groups will start first sometime in September.  The Language Arts groups will begin in early October.  We are using a slightly different method to determine student placement in the Resource Room this year.  In addition to using the tools we have used in the past--standardized ability and achievement tests, Fontas and Pinell reading assessments, math pretests and classroom performance--we will be adding the Kingore Observation Instrument (KOI) to the mix.  The KOI enables teachers to observe their students for behaviors that are "above and beyond" the typical student at that age level.  These characteristics are categorized into the following:
      Advanced Language
      Analytical Thinking
      Meaning Motivation
      Perspective
      Sense of Humor
      Sensitivity
      Accelerated Learning

Stay tuned for more information on these traits and the placement process.  I hope you enjoy your first week of school--and that we have some cooler days!

Second Grade Math Poems

A group of second grade students created a book of math poems to solve.  The students created these in the style of Greg Tang's book, The Grapes of Math.  We hope you enjoy reading and solving the riddles. 

The book may be found by going to the following link:

http://www.flipsnack.com/my-flipping-books/details?flip=f7jfgnux

Fourth Grade Playing With Words

A fourth grade class recently created this booklet illustrating a variety of examples of Words At Play.
We enjoyed discovering and/or creating these examples of Tom Swifties, oxymorons, palindromes, anagrams, puns and other word plays.  We hope you enjoy reading them and that they bring a smile to your face.

Click on the link below to see the student work.


http://www.flipsnack.com/9E5ADFBA9F7/fh9lr0w0

Let the Battles Begin!

 Click on this picture to see the entire album!

The annual Battle of the Books for fifth-eighth grade students took place yesterday, May 1.  We had a great event that was the culmination of months of reading.  Forty students participated!  Each "battle" consisted of answering questions about the ten assigned book titles.  Students have been very busy preparing by reading and reviewing the books.

We began the event at lunch time and treated ourselves to a fun celebratory lunch.  Then the battles began!  First came the seventh and eighth grade battle.  Both teams have been undefeated since their fifth grade competition.  Both teams were intensely focused--and even came in team colors and had team cheers.  This competition ended with a nail-biting tiebreaker.  Seventh grade was declared champions!

Then it was on to the fifth and sixth grade events.  Since each grade had multiple teams, we started with grade level battles to declare the top grade level team.  Then, fifth and sixth grade battled each other.  Once again, a tiebreaker!  Sixth grade was declared champions!

The quality and closeness of the competitions showcased the students' hard work.  We are so proud of each and every team that celebrated reading by participating in our fun Battle of the Books!  Every participant is a winner!

Enjoy the photos!

Some Fun Photos

Check out a few fun photos of Resource Room happenings today:

The fifth grade Math Masters team is at their regional competition today at Capitol Hill.  They have been working for months to prepare.  A huge thank you to Mr. Strong for leading them in this endeavor.  They were excellent representatives of Highland Catholic School and we are so proud of them!

Olivia, Charlie, Finn, Henry, Sam, Michael

All of the students in the Resource Room, race into the classroom so they have a few minutes to spend creating poems on the word wall.  Here is a fabulous poems created by Miguel and Jake.

"Whisper with big thoughts/ Imagine wish dream wonder/Never give up, I will be there.

And finally, a couple of fifth grade boys, Peter and Nick, used a little free time to create a large alphabet using the geoboards. 

The First Grade Important Book

First grade students in the Resource Room worked on their own version of The Important Book.
We hope you enjoy reading it!

http://snack.to/fdpi43in

Second Grade Fairy Tales

The second grade language arts groups in the Resource Room extended their classroom unit on fairy tales by creating their own tales. The groups investigated some creative fairy tales--including one that was told backwards!  The tale started with "Happily ever after" and ended with "Once upon a time".
As a group, we brainstormed our own fairy tale ideas and then worked to develop a tale with the best of the ideas.  These fairy tales came to life with all of the ideas and creative characters the children created.

We hope you enjoy our work.  Click on the links below to read the masterpieces!  The first fairy tale is from Room 104 and the second is from Room 106.

http://snack.to/fdulg589  

http://snack.to/fdk543in

Saints Alive!
Third grade students in the Resource Room Language Arts groups recently completed a study of a saint that had significance in their life.  The significance might have been a shared name, feast day or patronage of a certain quality, trait or group.  After doing research using books and websites, the students prepared reports and recorded them on iPads using DoodleCast.

The saint reports can be found below.   If you click on the thumbnail, the saint's name will appear and you can listen to the report.

Enjoy!

Winter Happenings

Congratulations to the Math Counts team from Highland Catholic School.  They recently competed in the regional Math Counts competition at Inver Hills Community College.  This event has team and individual events.  Our team placed fifth out of  nineteen teams.  We are very pleased with these results as each school is only allowed to send four seventh/eighth grade students.  This means that some of the very large suburban schools choose from hundreds of students compared to our school enrollment.  Of course, we think we have the BEST students ANYWHERE!  Here is the team getting ready to head to the competition.

Meanwhile, we have four Destination Imagination teams preparing for their competition on March 2.  These next two weeks will find them squeezing in some extra practices as they polish and refine their skits.  We wish them all the best.

Finally, third grade Resource Room students have been busy investigating geometry using pentomino blocks.  Here they are trying to find all the squares and rectangles that can be made from one set.  They then diagram their solutions.

Creativity Festival Fun
Last week, sixteen students in grades three and four attended the Creativity Festival with me.  This event was held at the Ted Mann Concert Hall on the University of Minnesota campus.  It is sponsored by Success Beyond the Classroom.   Students attended three classes during the day.  Options ranged from Balinese Rhythm and Chanting, Improvisational Comedy, Potions Party, Fun With Chemistry, West African Drumming, R.hythm A.nd P.oetry, How to Write a Radio Play and more.  There was so much information that incorporated both left and right brain thinking.

Our students jumped right in and had so much fun learning about these topics.  Check out a few pictures as well as the West African Drumming group.  They did the opening program for all of us.  They were spectacular.

 

Thinking Logically?

Fourth grade students in the Resource Room Language Arts groups have been working on "Tanglers".   Tanglers are cooperative problem-solving puzzles that are solved as a group.  Each member of the group receives one or two of the clues needed to solve the puzzle.  To be successful, the group needs to work together as the clues are shared.  Some of the clues are phony and they are all out of order.  No one may show their information to anyone else so listening skills are crucial to determine the usefulness of the clues and to order them correctly.

After solving a wide variety of these puzzles, the children each created their own Tangler.  Here are two examples.  See if you can solve them!  Good luck!  (Remember, the clues are not listed in order.)

Jamie's Puzzle:
Justin has 8 more toys than Lisa.
Lisa has 10 less toys than Sam.
Lisa has 27 toys.
Who has the most toys?
Lexie has 7 more toys than Margret.
Margret has 5 less toys than Justin.
Justin has 1 less toys than Jill.
Sam has 1 less toy than Jill.

Eli's Puzzle:
A kesh has 9 more legs than a ratchy.
Bows have 32 + 32 legs.
A licklicky has 24 less legs than a cowky, but 3 more than a bow.
Cowkys have 11 arms.
A patchy has the same number of legs as a cowky.
Keshes have 16 more arms than legs.
A dinawa is very big.
How many arms and legs does a kesh have?
A ratchy has 17 less legs than a patchy.