2nd Grade Batty Facts Voicethread
Mrs. Vest’s class create a Voicethread on Batty Facts to go with their lesson on facts and opinions.  Creating voicethreads on a specific topic gives students a chance to write, practicing reading, and listen back to information, which helps them learn and remember it better. They are also a great way to practice fluency and oral speaking skills.  Students are always amazed the first time they hear themselves read, and I always give them the option to redo their reading if they don’t like it.  It’s neat to see how quickly their reading changes when they can hear themselves! Take a look at their project (and feel free to leave them some comments).

Blogging 5th Graders
Mrs.  Hudson’s and Mrs. Graves 5th grade classes at Clearbrook Elementary are blogging!  I’m so proud of the hard work both the teachers and the students are putting into this project!  The kids are very excited, especially about comments they’ve received from some college students in Alabama.   They worked really hard on writing posts about instruments to go with the sound unit they are studied in Science, and they are working on entries about their visit to Apple Ridge Farms.  If you have a few minutes to leave them some commen

History on Tap Blog
The History on Tap blog is a great place to find resources that match Virginia’s SOLs for Social Studies and History, including games, foldables, presentations, study sheets, and more. It has resources for K-12, including tons of great things for VA Studies. It is updated and maintained by a Lisa Pennington, a Social Studies Specialist in Portsmouth, VA.  If you teach social studies content, check it out!

The Fun Theory
I love this concept. People will do harder things if you make it FUN! I just love to see that principle working in classrooms…and I often do!!!

O.R.E.O.s
First Grade classes around the county participated in an O.R.E.O. project, including Mrs. Chapman’s class, Mrs. Williams’ class, Mrs. Braun’s class,  and all of Oak Grove’s First Grade!   It was tons of fun, and it all centered around cookies!! Students stacked cookies to see how tall of a tower they could make before it tumbled and tallied their results. Then, they entered results on a spreadsheet to find a class average and to view a graph.  They discussed the data using words like greather than, less than, and equal to (see example below).