Today is the last day of STEAM Camp and Cabin 6 wanted to play with the puppets during indoor recess. The Crazy Cats had so much fun playing with the puppets. In an effort to raise awareness of the importance of recycling campers are creating posters to display in the school. Campers have collaborated with a partner to research an animal and it's dependance on trees in the rain forest to help foster empathy for these creatures. Campers then felt a desire to inform the Dana School student body of their learning and urge everyone to recycle to preserve the trees in the rainforest.
Campers created the guidelines (rubric) for the awareness posters and decided to use technology to create a visually pleasing reminder for each grade level. Campers began work today on their posters; informing students that graphic design is a career they could one day choose motivated everyone! Creating their first publication is certainly proving to be time consuming and detail oriented. Some of us are really relying on perseverance and patience to wait a whole day to continue our work tomorrow. Campers spent math workshop today applying a reviewed math concept from yesterday's lesson. We are learning how to add number strings effectively. Through inquiry, we learned that if we could make 10 by relying on our knowledge of combinations of numbers that equal ten we would be more successful at adding number strings quickly. Collaborating in pairs, using tools if necessary, proved to build our confidence with number strings. We created a chant and poster to boost our confidence as well.
Students are collaborating to read a story aloud during guided reading. We've been working on this story for the last couple classes, and were ready to read with fluency today. Good reading track their reading by using their finger to follow the words across the page as they read aloud. Students work independently during reading workshop. Some students are using Mac Airs to practice their high frequency words using an online word recognition game. Other students are using iPads to time their fluency progress for word lists, Frye phrases and short reading passages. Each day students record their times for these practices in their fluency folder. We are able to track our data as the summer progresses. Each student practice all skills every day for 15-20 minutes.
Today campers completed their research of rainforest animals. We are focusing on toucans, sloths, poison dart frogs, spider monkeys, tigers and jaguars. Our focus today was interesting facts about our animal. We were even able to make connections among our animals that use one another as prey. We learned jaguars are known to eat frogs, monkeys and sloths. Other facts we learned:
-Toucans eat mangos and they live in the tree tops. Their nests are in the tree trunks to protect the babies. -Tigers can run faster than humans. -Poisonous frogs can found in many different colors. - Tigers eat bits, pigs and deer too. -Jaguars eat crocodiles, deer, snakes, monkeys, eggs, frogs and fish. -Poisonous frogs travel in groups called an "army." -Spider monkeys use their tails like a third arm. -jaguars swim in the water. -Three-toed sloths are awake during the day and sleep at night, but two-toed sloths are awake at night and asleep during the day. -Spider monkeys live in the tree tops and rarely come down to the rainforest floor. I have had so much fun this week teaching campers how to play four square. We have really become competitive and adapted some brilliant strategy. I even broke a sweat trying to keep up with my friends! We are competitors this week.
During Wildcat Team Time campers are learning patriotic songs. We learned the meaning of our nation's flag last week, and have carried on our pride this week learning the lyrics to "My County 'Tis of Thee" and "You're a Grand Old Flag." We sing these songs at opening and closing ceremonies.
Name: Chloe Grade: 2nd grade First Grade Teacher: Ms. White What is your favorite thing about STEAM Camp? Opening and closing ceremonies are my favorite part of camp. What is your cabin's STEAM project all about? We get to learn about rainforest animals. We care about them because they could die when we cut down their trees. We can help the animals when we recycle. I am researching tigers. What camp activity are you doing this week? Do you know what you want to do next week? I am doing 4-square this week. Next week, I want to do Arts and Crafts. What is your favorite camp song? Boom, Chicka Boom! Is this your first year at STEAM Camp? Yes, ma'am. Are you excited to tell your friends about STEAM Camp next year in second grade? Yes, because maybe they haven't been to STEAM Camp. STEAM Camp is really fun. We get to do fun stuff. During math workshop campers have the option of practicing math skills in a variety of ways. Campers are using technology to build fluency with addition and place value this week. Campers are becoming comfortable with mental math too. We work in small settings to practice building dictated numbers using tens rods and ones. We can then manipulate the numbers by adding or subtracting tens. Lastly, campers improve their speed and accuracy with addition facts to 18 by playing table games. Some campers are challenging themselves to practice number strings with math tools.
During our Phonics block we are still working on onset and rime. Today we used inquiry based learning and foam letters to build words that ended in -ame, -ate, and -ake. Tomorrow we will continue our collaborative exploration and share our word lists aloud. Campers are really getting the hang of generating word lists using rimes.
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Ms. WilsonSTEAM Camp is created with student achievement, inquiry and engagement in mind. I hope to fulfill my student's expectations as we embark on a great summer of learning. ArchivesCategories
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