Blog Archives

Connecting lessons learned from Thanksgiving and the Art Museum to our unit, How We Express Ourselves

11/26/2016

It was only a two day week...but we made the most of each day! Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving break! Be sure to visit kidblog.org to see what we are thankful for and how we're spending our Thanksgiving break. I am enjoying reading all of the posts and seeing the many ways we celebrated with family and friends.

On Tuesday we headed over to the Cleveland Museum of Art to learn about myths and legends. We also chose pieces of work to analyze the mood created by the artist. What did the artist do to create this mood?

Our docent, Carol, was amazing!! She leads many of the tours for IB schools. She was very knowledgeable of our key concepts and how to help us make connections to our central idea.

We are thankful for our wonderful museums here in Cleveland!

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Important lessons learned from heroes, folktales, food, and forms of expression.

11/19/2016

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This week was busy with many great lessons, state testing, and field trips. One of the biggest take-aways was on Friday, while reflecting with a student on her learning menu for the week. I asked,

"What did all of our lessons have in common this week?" I thought she would say something about, taking action to make the world a better place. Instead she said, "That we are all connected to everything and everyone. What I eat is connected to how I live, how I treat people is connected to the world, and folktales are connected to how people lived in other parts of the world."
Wow!

Miss Reece taught us a lesson on Race. What is race? She helped us understand literal vs. figurative language. What does it mean to take off your skin?

It was interesting to hear students connect their IB attributes and recent news events to this lesson.

Nice job, Miss Reece! We sure will miss you!!

Reflecting on our lesson with Miss Reece

We have enjoyed reading folktales/fables and finding the theme/important lesson. We have also made connections between folktales and cultures.

We tried writing some folktales of our own!

Delaney's expression...a painting of her family

We took a trip to Heinen's downtown for lunch. We earned this courtesy of our Parent Caring Organization for raising the second highest amount for our Dance-a-Thon! We were able to take a tour and hear about this great landmark in our city...that used to be The Cleveland Trust Bank.

Carla, the head of Health and Wellness for this Heinen's location, did a great job teaching us about the different food groups and how to fill our bodies with healthy food choices...especially with the holidays coming up! Did you know that Wednesdays are Half-Priced Sushi??

We will be back!!

The Plain Dealer printed this article the day before our trip to Heinen's Supermarket. It was discovered the stained-glass dome is not the work of Tiffany. It is actually the work of the Philadelphia stained-glass firm started by Italian immigrant Nicola D'Ascenzo, whose other works include the stained-glass windows at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Our trip to Heinen's prompted us to read and discuss healthy eating in preparation for Thanksgiving. We are tracking our fruits and vegetables for 1 week.

We are working hard on citing text evidence. Some students are getting confused with citing = using exact words from the text to support a claim vs summarizing and paraphrasing (putting information into our own words).
It takes time. Keep working on this with homework reading responses, and by going over assignments brought home.

Thank you for all of the cards, flowers, emails, texts, and kind words. I am so appreciative and honored to have received this award. I absolutely love what I do, and having supportive families like you, makes the experience even better.

I can't believe how fast this year (and loop) is going. I will always remember this group and their genuine desire to make the world a better place. One day, we will see this group of students, accept MANY awards. I consider myself lucky, to have played a small part in their beautiful journey.