Dewey Decimal Fun

I found this fun interactive game for teaching the Dewey Decimal System.  I used it for the
4th and 5th grades.  The game is like Jeopardy.  I let the students use the information sheet from the
lessons on Dewey and they could help each other to answer the questions.  The website is www.quia.com/cb/415196.html.  If this doesn't work I typed in Google "Dewey Decimal Fun"  and this website came up.  The students really enjoyed this fun way to learn the Dewey Decimal System.

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.

So Many Books

I don't know if you have this problem, but sometimes new books get checked out so fast that only one classroom ever sees them! We've been changing the books on this board, which is right above the computer station. When we get a book order in, we put pictures of some of the new books up (and of course added some older titles). It has helped getting some of our newer titles seen, and gives them ideas about what to search.

Peruvian Park Gets Artistic

We read Andrew Drew and Drew  by Barney Saltzberg and Art & Max by David Wiesner. 

We then had the children create their own ‘art’. The children had two different activities to choose from: 1- Art Dice: children drew the line they rolled to create a picture; 2-children created a picture using the few lines already drawn on their paper.

We continued with our ‘I Spy” theme for the year and created a bulletin board displaying some of the pictures our amazing students created.  We made four books, Panthers Drew and Drew and Drew, out of the extra pictures.

The children loved having a chance to show their artistic side.