Friday, February 6, 2009
Recap of Last Two Months...
Sincerely,
Tyler,Trevor, Bailey, and Adrian.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Theme Message in a Bottle
On January 30th, a normal Friday in Mrs.Walkers class, we learned about theme message in a bottle. This project took from January 30th to February 4th in the year of 2009. In this project we learned how to read a story and find its theme statement and learned how to write about the characters and their different view points. We also could take two different stories and put them together. The two stories that we used werem "The Power of the Powerless" and "Mother and Daughter." Mrs.Walker said that she chose these two stories because she " thought that these two stories had connections that we could connect with. Particularly because bothe featured elements about families." Mrs.Walker said that she liked listening to the letters and she "thought the kids did a great job being creative."
After this project was due we interviewed the whole class for their opinion on the theme message in a bottle. 22 out of 25 students that did the project said that they liked it. In the class 18 out of 25 said that if they were to do the this project again next year they would do better than this year. 6 out of 25 students said that they would do the same than this year on the project. 0 out of 25 said that they would do worse on the project.
Even though the main reason for this project was to learn how to read a story and be able to know the theme statement(s) and know the different viewpoints of the characters or learning how to connect two different stories, many kids learned a variety of different things from this project. Taylor said she "learned more about theme statements while being creative." Kenzie said that she learned "that every story has a theme statement." " I learned how to express my feelings through a characters view point," said Adrian.
Our group feels that this project has turned out a success for Mrs.Walker!
Dragon Characterization
Our blog project that we decided to pick was about, "The Reluctant Dragon." What we had to do was draw a picture using a good description of the Dragon characteristics. Mrs. Walker's instructions were to analyze the characteristics of characters, then draw an accurate picture of the dragon and pick ten character traits of the dragon and creatively place them around the border.
We had to learn how to be able to look between the lines and infer characteristics about the main characters in the story. We went around the classroom to see what people thought about this project. When asked what she thought was easy and hard, Sierra said "The easy part was drawing and coloring the dragon, and the hard part was thinking of 10 descriptive words."
Kaylia said "I liked that we could do a comic picture about anything we wanted and what can I say I love creativity" When asked what the most fun thing about the dragon charcterization? Kenzie said "Drawing the dragon because it was fun and mine was cute." After interviewing a couple of students, we decided to take a poll. 81% said that they like the dragon project, 18% said they did not.
In conclusion, the dragon project seemed to be a success because a lot of people enjoyed it and we learned a lot about characterization.
The Lyrics Assigment
When asked which song students felt spoke to them "The River" ranked-13 votes. "Video" ranked- 6. "Imagine" ranked-4.
Here's what we did:
1. We read the lyrics.
2. We listened to each song and highlighted the verses in the song that spoke to us.
3. After listening to each song Mrs.Walker gave us some time to visualize what we thought the song meant.
4. Than we came up with theme topics-one word that sums up the theme.
5. As a group we came up with theme statements-a statement that we thought portrayed the theme topc and author's message from the song.
6. Then at the end of class we reflected upon which song we identified with the most.
Here's what our favorite teacher Mrs.Walker had to say: "I liked this assignment because I heard from former students that it was their favorite activity and I like to see how passionate kids are about music."
There were also students that really thought the words spoke to them-for"India Arie's song about self esteem" Kaylee Main-"I feel that I need to do certain things to get noticed, but deep down I am happy with who I am, and listening to this song will help me let my true colors show."
Also a very deep response was by Kenzie Gould. "The song that really spoke to me was "Video" because every girl goes through a hard time when they don't like themselves for who they are, but finally they figure out that they can be someone completely different."
In closing, "Everyone can be who they want if they figure out their true self."
Produced by Kaylia, Sara, Colby and Alondra.
The Parent Project
Goldilocks Trial
Guilty!
Brandi and Sara believe she is innocent. They think that she has a twin named Modoldilocks and she is half-dog. She can't help it she was born that way, but let's look at what other people say. Jonathan also says that she is innocent because the Muffin Man sent her sister Modoldilocks (the half-dog) to get some muffins at the Bear's house. Yet although these are some expample of extremely excellent evidence there are still those lawyers out there who argue until they get their snobby way. Like my good friend Erica. She believes Goldilocks is (without a doubt) 100% guilty. She explained to us, "I don't like Goldilocks because she is a criminal, and she can get into my house!" Another good guy is my peer Joey. He says, "She is guilty for ransacking the Bear's house. Winny the Pooh is my witness!" Another good friend of mine is Sierra and she says, "She is 100% guilty because she deliberately disobeyed her mom and went into the forest in the first place."
So now it's up to you, the people of the jury and the people who have heard the story, is she guilty or is she innocent?