Published Authors

We spent the past week in Writers Workshop publishing our How To/Procedural writing pieces using the iPads. The Scribble Press app allows us to illustrate and type our writing pieces in a child friendly format. Then the students created a back cover and front cover. When they were done they emailed their published piece to me so that I could share it with families. The other cool thing that we were able to do is sync our finished pieces to iBooks. That means that whenever we are on the iPads we can read each other's published pieces. The project was challenging and motivating for the young writers and they all did an amazing job. In April we will move into a study of Poetry in both Readers and Writers Workshop.

For our theme unit around Citizenship all of the students of Synergy House became a part of a council where they needed to create rules and laws for a certain part of the school day. The councils were locker area, bathroom, lunch room, and recess. The students came up with "laws" for each area, created posters and reward cards for their council, and then presented their laws to the entire team. For the past week they have been "on duty" making sure that the rules and laws for their area are being followed. They are really taking their jobs seriously and have been recognizing responsibility in the actions of their teammates.

We began a new unit in math this past week. Unit Five will have us working with larger numbers to find effective and efficient strategies for addition and subtraction. We will think about ways to represent our thinking in pictures, numbers, and words. Students will be creating and solving story problems created by their fellow mathematicians. The mathematicians will also come back to use their strategies to count mixed quantities of coins up to $2.00.
Click here to read more about this unit.