Amanda King’s kindergarten class celebrates the end of their Chinese New Year unit with homemade dumplings, lai see envelopes and a dragon parade with their fifth grade reading buddies. One of their favorite books to read is The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac by Dawn Casey. The students created their own retelling of the story by illustrating pictures in KidPix and writing their own version of the story. Below is their finished product.
The Great Race from Karin Gravina on Vimeo.
As part of the fifth grade curriculum, students learn about the world’s continents – location, size, people, natural and man-made landforms, climate, countries, famous places, and natural resources. The initial research project began in 2012-13 with a world continent study. The students developed a continent template in which future classes could then continue to research the specific continent and extend the research into countries within each continent. Each year since student teams have added one country each year from each of the five continents: Africa, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe, and South America. In 2017-18, we added a study of five countries in North America:
Click on each country to view the website:
Alyson Bull’s annual sixth grade Book Character Day is not complete until her students are interviewed by Prudence Pringle (a.k.a Ms Donna Rivers). One of the highlights of sixth grade!
My Movie 1 from Karin Gravina on Vimeo.
Always a fun-filled day at LES!
Book Character Day 2017 from Karin Gravina on Vimeo.
This audio-visual music project began with Heidi Renauld’s fifth grade students choosing a Shel Silverstein poem. Students recorded their narrations into the Garageband program, then explored and strategized to include music and sound ideas to enhance the poem’s mood and imagery in compelling ways. They created a “score” or cue sheet to plan and document their piece of work. This lesson incorporated performing, improvising, composing, arranging, notating, listening, analyzing and describing music, as well as understanding music in relation to language and culture.
Jackson A and Noel
Sarah and Zoe
Jackson B. and Nathan
Hayden and Max
Isabel and Madeline
Henry and Levi
Francesca and Magdalene
Henry and Levi
Skyler and Jameson
Liam
This audio-visual music project began with Heidi Renauld’s sixth grade students choosing a Shel Silverstein poem, one rich with visual and aural images. Students recorded their narrations into the Garageband program, then explored both Soundbible.com and the Garageband library to include music and sound ideas to enhance the poem’s mood and imagery using either Pixabay or PhotosForClass. Students then created a video in iMovie, selecting appropriate visual images and incorporating their audio portion as the soundtrack. This lesson incorporated performing, improvising, composing, arranging, notating, listening, analyzing and describing music, as well as understanding music in relation to language and culture.
NO by Ben and Gavin from Karin Gravina on Vimeo.
Eighteen Flavors by Scout and Aurelia from Karin Gravina on Vimeo.
The Ball Game by Grace and Alysia from Karin Gravina on Vimeo.
Field Day 2017 from Karin Gravina on Vimeo.
Grade 5 Play 2017 from Karin Gravina on Vimeo.
