Dr. Johnson's Reading Blog

For several months we have been studying continental and ocean landforms and how these landforms were created. As one form of assessment, students were asked to create a model of the continental and ocean landforms we have been studying. Next, we used an app called Educreations  in which we can record and create video lessons. Students recorded themselves discussing the various continental and ocean landforms. Here are student examples from the four groups. Since I am unable to embed these videos, the links will take you the website. Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4

Next week (Thursday, December 12) we will participate in a simulation of the immigration experience. In social studies, we are studying the Gilded Age as it transitioned to the Progressive Era. Studying immigration is an important part of this study so we usually take a few weeks to look at immigration and how it affected the development of the United States becoming a world power. The experience is supposed to simulate the emotions, feelings, and perspectives of the immigrants who sailed to the United States. Each student is playing the role of either an immigrant or an Ellis Island processor; characters were drawn randomly. Your child is expected to research that particular immigrant's background (characters are fictional) and nationality in order to better portray, and understand, that particular immigrant. Processors will be doing the same thing - getting to know their character and their background. This will influence how characters interact and how decisions are made. As y...

I am having a difficult time keeping up with our blog. I am so sorry about that. As a I shared at Curriculum Night, students would be engaging in their first Expert Project of the year. Their expert project is on ecosystems. Each student is in charge of researching a particular ecosystem, uncovering all they can about that ecosystem, then identify various characteristics of that ecosystem such biotic and abiotic factors, identifying herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores, etc. We begun research yesterday and student expert projects will be due the week of November 11 - 14. There are three parts to the expert project: Written Portion - students are expected to type two pages, double-spaced, sharing their ecosystem Slideshow Presentation - students will put together a slideshow to present to their peers. This slideshow will provide visuals and diagrams (food chains and webs) of their ecosystem Verbal Portion - to go along with their slideshow, students must practice what they...

I have posted the presentation we used for our Friday gathering. This will give you a glimpse into what we have been working on over the last couple of weeks. To say the least, we have been busy! This week, our class will be heading over to Summit Middle School to get a lesson on how to use microscopes. This is a part of our unit of study on cells. We will be using microscopes to study the various parts of animal and plant cells. Our citizen science projects are just beginning. In a nutshell, different groups of students are engaging in various citizen science projects. Some of these projects range from documenting wildlife around our school to monitoring precipitation to transcribing ancient documents. These types of projects allow students to be included in a much larger community of scientists knowing the information they collect and document will be used by various professionals all over the world. As many know, explorations is an important part of our day. During this...

Welcome back to a new school year! It is so nice returning with the same group of students. We have been able to jump right in to school and classroom procedures, adjusting to new schedules, and getting used to our new roles as the "elders" of the school. Here a few pictures from our first day of school. By far the best part was meeting our lunch / reading buddies. After meeting our lunch buddies, we headed over to the cafeteria to each lunch with them. We will start reading with our buddies in a few weeks, after Mrs. Klosterman has had some time to help the kindergarteners adjust to school life. We are definitely looking forward to these times. Besides getting used to the classroom schedule and helping kids get back into thinking as readers, writers, and mathematicians, we have begun investigating citizen science projects all students will participate in. I have been a big proponent of citizen science because it allows students to participate in the collection of data th...

Thank you to everyone who in some way helped out with our 4th grade field trip to Brattonsville (I will post a few pictures soon). I believe everyone, children and adults, had a wonderful time on this trip. Though a little rainy, I couldn't have asked for a more well-behaved and attentive group of students. The docents in Brattonsville were awesome storytellers so you couldn't help being engulfed in their presentations. When Adam the slave was sharing his story, it took everything in me to hold back my tears. Truly, a wonderful experience.  All this week will be PASS Testing. Please remember to make sure your child gets enough sleep and eats a good breakfast to keep their energy going. Tuesday will be the reading portions of PASS, math on Wednesday, science on Thursday, and social studies on Friday. Because of PASS Testing, I am also limiting the amount of homework going out. They will be bringing home their Everyday Math journal to work on some review in preparation of thei...