Harris Burdick Reading Class

 

After reading "The Stranger," the students worked with the famous illustrations of Harris Burdick to design their own mysteries in reading class this week.

Harris Burdick is a mysterious illustrator who left his illustrations and associated picture captions to be published, but he never returned with the stories as he promised he would. Famous authors have written their interpretations of his stories, as have students around the world.

The reading students did a wonderful job completing mystery web planners to develop clues, distractions, and their plot before the writing process began.

M&M Multiplication

Indoor "Down Time"

The foggy and rainy weather kept us inside for our morning recess, so the boys spent some unstuctured time in the classroom playing music, games, and chatting with one another. The boys braved the wet weather for lunch recess, but we certainly have our fingers crossed for nicer weather tomorrow!

Indoor Downtime from Ms. Gentry on Vimeo.

Titanic Timeline Activity

After reading the incredible "Titanic" story, we created a timeline of the days leading up to and following the sinking of the unsinkable ship. Students worked in partners to create a plan for sequencing the 18 events which required properly identifying years, days, hours, and minutes to create a logical order. Below the video of our activity are videos showing live footage of the Titanic wreck as it lies on the ocean floor. We were all amazed by our "visit" to this underwater museum and the technological advances made to make this trip possible.

Titanic Timeline Activity from Ms. Gentry on Vimeo.



Untitled from billy williams on Vimeo.

Snow Day

The boys worked on their Snow Day compositions this week, in which they described a snowday from the perspective of a young boy and of a snowflake. We extended the composition by creating word clouds on wordle to demonstrate the key words in each composition.
Snow day Wordles from Ms. Gentry on Vimeo.

6-B Character Activities

We spent time with our character class 6-B yesterday. We read stories that taught us about snowflakes, and how each flake is unique, just like us! The boys then worked with the Sixth Agers to make snowflakes to celebrate the winter season. Perhaps making virtual snowflakes would have been less messy, but we certainly had a great time with our buddies!

Character Snowflake Project from Ms. Gentry on Vimeo.

Composition Process





(image from icanread)



We were finishing the final composition of our December folders on Thursday, and the boys were busy conducting partner reviews. The composition process begins with a day of brainstorming and webplanning, a second day to write the first paragraph, and a final day to write the second paragraph and proof-read. Proof-reading involves independently reading and completing a checklist with a partner that includes personal writing goals and the general mechanical and structual components of writing covered in grammar. This week we focused on proper conjunction use, which helped many students correctly integrate complex sentences into their writing.



Composition Day 3 from Ms. Gentry on Vimeo.