Maker Space_Learning Place: 2013

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Self-Portraits

Its been a crazy couple of weeks, and we now we only have 7 school days left. Below are some wonderful self portraits the students made (using watercolor).

Friday, May 17, 2013

We are happy to say that the writing of our bird projects is finally coming to a close. Students have completed their rough drafts (and edited) and it is now time for the final step, publishing. It is our hope that students will have their final drafts typed. To make this possible, Ms. Pepitone and I would like to ask families to type up their child’s report. I will take the time to format the reports, so all that is needed is a typed word document copy of the bird rough draft.

The end of the year bird report timeline:

· Students/Parents type the rough draft of the bird report[1].

· Parents email typed drafts to Mr. Erickson (nle@lclark.edu).

· Bird Reports need to be typed and emailed to Mr. Erickson by the morning of Tuesday, May 21st.

Note: Please contact me with any questions or concerns regarding the ability to type student work. Any student who does not have a typed report will hand write their final draft. This is so each student will have a completed report for our upcoming publishing party.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Erickson

[1]Common Core State Standard: W.2.6 With guidance and support from adults, students use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.

Special Interest Project (Michael Jordan)

Izak presented his special interest project on Michael Jordan.

[Five MVP awards, ten All-NBA First Team designations, nine All-Defensive First Team honors, fourteen NBA All-Star Game appearances, three All-Star Game MVP awards, ten scoring titles, three steals titles, six NBA Finals MVP awards, and the 1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. He holds the NBA records for highest career regular season scoring average (30.12 points per game) and highest career playoff scoring average (33.45 points per game)]

Blue Heron Feed

To correspond with our Bird unit, we have been watching a live feed from a blue heron nest. As of today, TWO eggs have hatched!

I will try to figure out how to embed the feed, but below is the link:

http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/channel/8/Great_Blue_Herons/

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Special Interest (Mount St. Helens)

Yesterday (Wednesday) we had a special interest project by Jude on Mt. St. Helens.

Franz

Last Friday we went on a walking field trip to Franz bakery.

The history of Franz Bakery

Getting ready for the tour

Friday, May 10, 2013

Special Interest Project (Turtles and Tortoises)

Yesterday we had a wonderful special interest project from Fox. He created a poster and a booklet on the differences between tortoises and turtles. He even had a very special guest to help him with his presentation, his tortoise Lazlo (a russian desert tortoise).

Bird Haikus (Continued)

Here are some additional bird haikus/paintings.

Raven

oh raven raven

oh black big Mighty Raven

scraping claws so sharp

-Miles W

Black Capped Chickadee

Snacking from my bird feeder

Hooping all around

-Moriah

Western Tanager

Northern Harrier

northern harrier

your are the fastest flyer

eating small things snakes

-Zoe

Brown Pelican

brown pelican diving

SPLASH filling it's pouch with fish

swallowing fish

-Sam

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Classroom Update 5.7.13

Dear Families,

We hope you have been enjoying the wonderful weather. Here is our classroom update for the week of May 5th.

·We have swimming this Thursday (5/9). We only have two more swimming times after this one!

·Friday (5/10) is our Franz Bakery field trip and there are two more spots for parent volunteers. We will be eating lunch at Buckman, and will leave at 12:30 pm.

·This is a heads up that next week we will be sending home the bird reports. It is our hope that you can help your student type up the report and email the document file (we will format and print them here).

·Next Wednesday (5/15) is a Late Opening.

Homework (due: 5/14):

·A math worksheet (on graphs)

·Reading log (20 minutes a night of reading)

·Daily writing journal (it is our goal to get 100% of the journals back!)

Sincerely,

Mr. Erickson and Ms. Pepitone

May Bulletin Board (Bird Haikus)

May is our classroom's month to adorn the bulletin board to the left of the office. We decided to create haikus about each students' bird with an accompanying watercolor. These are just 10 of the 28 pieces (there are still a good number of students needing to finish), and the rest will be hung outside of our classroom. The quality of each piece (both the poem and the painting) is astounding. I am always thoroughly impressed the the artistic qualities of each student in my class.