Battles Will Begin...

3rd-5th grade OBOB battles begin this week!  Please come support your readers this Tuesday, Jan. 30th in Mr. Dante's room beginning at 11:30!  The first battle will be between Master Books and The Readers.  The second battle will happen around 11:55 and will be between The Book Battlers and The Enchanted Readers.  In the following weeks all battles will be on Wednesday for the 3rd-5th grade teams.   They will be battling for the chance to go to Regionals on Saturday, March 17th at Clackamas Community College.   They have worked hard to compete so any support is so valuable for our young readers. 

The 6th-8th grade school battles will begin on Thursday, Feb. 8th.  at 11:30 in the Media Center.  They will compete for their Regional spot which will happen Sunday, March 11th at Estacada Middle School.  

What's Your Number?

Making our MRA students successful in the search for the right resource is one of our main focuses in the media center.  The Huckleberry students have been continuing to strengthen their detective skills by learning how to read the call numbers on our Everybody Books.  They have learned where Ted Arnold's Fly Guy books are found along with the famous Jan Beret, Lois Ehlert, Mo Wilems, and many more. 

Using cut out spine labels we are practicing how to place books in alphabetical order by the author's last name. 

MRA Logo Animations

We are continuing to develop our coding skills during our elective classes.  Here are a few of our projects.

 

Changes for 2018

As we start a new year back from the holidays, we have a few changes happening in the Mountain Meadow.  We are thrilled to have Mr. Kevin Mahr on board as our Cedar/Alder math associate and computer teacher for Clarkia and Alders.    Mr. Mahr and I will be sharing the media center for our classes.  Your student's library times may have changed slightly to accommodate our shared space.  I am excited to be able to bring more time and energy to our garden and library classes.   Please remember to encourage your child to remember their library books on their library day.

We are continuing to weed our library collection and have a table outside the library where you can help yourself to books to add to your own collection.  We currently have  A to Z Mystery books available.

Our Trillium classes are continuing to learn about well-known authors and illustrators.  We will beginning a unit on Caldecott Award winning books.

Our Huckleberry classes are working on becoming expert library detectives as they develop a strong sense of where certain genres of literature are kept and how to use alphabetical order to decode where a book's call number will be on the shelf.  

Our Clarkia classes are continuing with their nonfiction text element scavenger hunts to unlock information quickly for their upcoming research project on weather.  

OBOB (Oregon Battle of the Books) meetings will begin this week.  3rd-5th grade will be meeting at lunch/recess time on Wednesdays and 6th-8th grade meetings will be held on Thursdays.  

Learning How To Google Draw

The Alder classes have been learning how to use drawing tools in google.  They were assigned the task of creating a water transportation system to alleviate a common problem that was meet by the ancient Mesopotamian civilization.  Here are few of the completed projects.

Nonfiction Text Element Scavenger Hunt

The Clarkia have been working on finding information and creating their own piece of expository text.  Before completing their writing we first had to learn the best ways to unlock information using text tools.  Our focus has been on using:  table of contents, index, headings, captions, glossary work, and much more.

We went on a scavenger hunt using the Oregon School Library Information System.

Using the National Geographic Kids ebooks we looked to see how quickly we could find information on rocks by using the many text tools.  This was a lot of fun and we found out some cool facts in a short amount of time.

Stop Motion Coding

During our coding elective our animation group has been working on creating dialogue using stop motion technology and coding.  This takes a lot of perseverance and troubleshooting.  Often students will need to work together to find out the reason glitches are occurring and form solutions.  I am proud of how hard they have worked to overcome these obstacles and make a final product.  Please take time to check out a few of our creations.

Carter's Project

Cody's Project

Emi's Project

Criss-Anna's Project

Annie's Project