Monday, November 28, 2016

"Know Thyself"


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Reflection is an essential part of learning at MRA.  A student portfolio tells a story of a student's growth in learning.

This year we would like to introduce our Cedars to creating E-portfolios.

The Cedars discussed and discovered this past week how portfolio reflections benefit personal growth and learning:


1)  It  improves understanding of  yourself as a student and the subjects covered.
2)  It helps engage and motivates learners, both individually and as part of a community.
3)  It can  be personalized to our different learning strengths.

Our wordles made to define the benefits of porfolios:




Saturday, November 12, 2016

In the Media Center This Week...

Our Cedar students are continuing to practice their email writing etiquette skills.  We have drafted and formulated emails to Molalla businesses to see if they would like to support MRA through buying our Holiday Greens and Wreaths.  This project was mainly to give our Cedars hands on experience in being professional but we have been rewarded with a couple of responses to our emails which gives us a sense of importance.

Our Alder students are learning how to best organize their emails through learning about gmail's system of labels, filters, and organizations.  They now have folders for each of their teachers and have developed filters for those emails to go directly into the designated folders.

The Clarkia are working hard to maintain their 90% accuracy goal in typing and increasing their speed.  They have worked hard to memorize the homerow keys and correct finger placement.  They are also working on learning different genres of literature with a focus on biographies.  We started reading a great biography on Sacagawea.











The Huckleberries are learning the ways they can unlock information by using text elements.  Finding information about the planet Earth was easy when we looked in the index and found the page numbers, along with remembering that just as we use our index finger to point to things we want, like cookies in the grocery store, a book's index can help direct us to information quickly.








The Trillium are learning the different parts of a book and the information we find on the front cover, spine, and back cover.  We learned about the important job of an author and read about Mo Willems and read one of our favorite Elephant and Piggy books, "We Are In A Book".

Sunday, October 30, 2016

A Treasure Full Of Books

Congratulations MRA!  You exceeded our goal of 500 books sold.  We sold a total of 636 books.  Thank you so much for your support.  This will add at least 50 more new book titles to our Mountain Meadow Media Center.  We were given $132 in donations to All Books in which the Scholastic Possible Fund matches every donation, up to $1 million in books, received through the program and distributes them to children in need through organizations such as Kids In Need Foundation, Reader to Reader, Inc., and the National Center for Families Learning.


Sunday, October 23, 2016

Book Fair-This Week!

Please stop by our Scholastic Book Fair this week.  Open before and after school, in the WildWoods Gym.  This helps support new books for our library.  Thank you.  

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Hoax or No Hoax?

The Cedars have been exploring what makes a website authentic.  We have had some fun exploring websites trying to determine if they are a hoax or if they are real.  The Cedars have used online comprehension strategies and answered questions to determine if this site is authentic.  What do you think?  We would love for you to try out the link and discover if the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is indeed an endangered species!  http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ 


Sunday, October 9, 2016

Book Talks


With so many books in the world it's hard to know what to read next or what might spark an interest.  This year at MRA we are letting students lead the way to the next great read.  The Alders did a great job in sharing "A Hook", something that grabs the readers attention, and "A Quick Look", a summary without giving too much away about irresistible books.  Please come have a look at their top picks in our Media Center.  
 Nathan sharing about  a great adventure and mystery series:  Alex Rider

Evie sharing about the new  mysterious and thrilling Miss Peregrine series!  
A captured audience as Libby shares "I am Princess X".


Sunday, October 2, 2016

So, Sad...



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We are saddened to hear that Mo Willems wrote his last Elephant and Piggie book in the series.  We read, laughed, asked a zillion questions, and loved our time with this book this week.

Here's an excerpt from Publishers Weekly article from Mo Willems:

“Twenty-five is a lot. I guess if you don’t know how to read by now you never will,” Willems wisecracked. “But seriously, I knew from the beginning that Elephant & Piggie would be my life’s work. The part I have enjoyed the most is where they stopped being my invention and I could just put them in a position – say, have a snake show up – and they would essentially write the story for me without being bombastic or difficult like the pigeon.”

We are anxiously awaiting Willems new book in which the artwork is all done with cut paper.  

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If you are looking for a good read aloud for your family I would encourage you to try it.