Oakdale Elementary

The simple ideas are sometimes the best ideas.

For story this week, we are reading "Fortunately' and 'Good New, Bad News' 

to all of our classes. Then we are placing the students on the floor in a big circle. 

 We start a simple story idea such as,

"Brian was bored. He was home alone with nothing to do.  FORTUNATELY, the doorbell rang!

He ran to answer. When he opened the door UNFORTUNATELY..." Then we pass our portable microphone to the first student, who adds to the story.  They continue with 'FORTUNATELY,  and UNFORTUNATELY scenarios until we run out of students.  Then I may finish, by saying "He woke up and realized it was all a bad dream!"

The students loved it and some classes asked if we could do it again.  

Oakdale Elementary

For Earth Day, Shannon made a tree. We cut out leaves from pages of an old dictionary.  We asked the students to write one word that would make the world a better place.  Here are some of their answers.

Oakdale Elementary

Just 18 school days left...

Oakdale Elementary

For teacher appreciation week, we read the students 'Many Luscious Lollipops: a Book About Adjectives" by Ruth Heller.  We then put them in a circle, passed a mic around and had them each give an adjective describing their teacher.  We recorded their responses on paper.  After each class left we made a 'word cloud' for each teacher.  We used the site 'Tagxedo' to make them. We printed them, mounted on cardstock and laminated them.  The teachers loved them. This is how they turned out.