November 2 - November 6

What a beautiful week of weather we have seen this week!  Seventy-two degrees in November is a great way to start a new month and we're all enjoying it while it's here.

Mrs. Turk's students have been in the library for the majority of the week.  They are working on doing research on a topic of their choice that relates to the book they are reading, either The City of Ember or Gathering Blue.  The students were shown different tools for doing research as well as how to be website detectives.  Noodle Tools was explained and students synced up their Noodle Tools accounts with google so they can easily gather their citations throughout their research.  Students took their research and then made a project using the web tool Thinglink.

Students continued to come in to do some independent reading for Mr. Pratt's language arts class and study hall students were busy completing projects in Publisher and working hard on a variety of collaborative projects for their classes.

October 26 - October 30

This week Ms. Poz's classes came in library to finish up their Country projects.  It was amazing to see the creative ideas the students incorporated into their projects, and they did a great job working together.

Mrs. Murphy's Spanish class worked on creating an acrostic using their name and words that describe them in Spanish using Google Docs and Google Drawings.  This was a great chance to install the Add-on Open Clip Art as well as discuss when it's beneficial to use a drawing in your document.  The students found out that the drawing tool saved them a great deal of frustration!  Some great examples of this project are below:

Español Example One
Español Example Two


Wednesday and Thursday I spent working with Mrs. Honn's class doing a Mysery Vox with another 7th grade class from an unknown location.  The students from both classes asked questions to try and figure out the location of the other.  I was impressed with the mental mapping and deduction skills used by the House 7C students. We were able to figure out their location early on Thursday, it was San Jose, California!  They figure our location out shortly after we did, so we then shared information about our cities and were able to ask and answer questions together.  A big thank you to Ms. Kirwin's class in California!

Friday we had some visitors from the fifth grade classes at Clarendon.  They presented their speeches on Famous American.  They did a great job and our students had fun learning from them.  Since it's the day before Halloween students were able to dress up.  It was fun to see the creative students.

Tellagami Examples

 The students have finished using the Tellegami App to showcase their Spanish speaking skills.  Below are a couple of great examples.

October 19 - October 23

This week started off with Mrs. Honn's Geography classes coming in the library to learn about how to use QR codes for their Around the World project that will be starting shortly.  Some students have used QR codes in the past and some haven't, so this was a great opportunity for students to get on the same page.  When they were done learning about QR codes they began working a project where they create a country.

A House 7C student trying out a QR Code

Mr. Rixmann's students from WLEX came in if they needed materials for their Spanish reports.  They students used Destiny and accessed the resource lists to complete this task.  Mrs. Lynch also came in with her Read 180 students to choose picture books to read to some of their fellow students.

Mrs. Murphy's Spanish class used the iPad app Tellegami to make avatars, or gami's of themselves.  Once their Gami's were created they used their Spanish speaking skills to describe themselves. The students have had a blast learning this new app.

The end of the week I had the chance to work with Ms. Pozolinski's Geography students.  They are working in small groups and creating a country.  They're using  Google Slides to create a collaborative presentation with the different cultural, political, and economic traits of their countries.  These presentations will then be shared with their classmates.

Ms. Horne's sent small groups of students to do book studies, and what an amazing job they did discussing their books and being on task.

Ms. Horne's students completing book studies 

Students hard at work on their book studies

Math Smores

Ms. Boushley's Algebra class created Smores, which are online flyers. They were able to choose a topic of their choice, but it needed to relate to math, so it could be a person, a job, a math tool, or something else of their choice.  Some examples of their flyers are below.

Teen Read Week!

Teen Read is being celebrated in the Park View library, not only this week, but through the end of the month.  We are challenging students to participate in a reading scavenger hunt.  There are many options of what students can do to participate including reading books, magazine, and newspapers. They can also listen to audio books, take a shelfie, create Halloween poetry, find interesting facts, check-out ebooks, and use Destiny to search for an author with their first or last name.  Below is a link that shows some of the different activities the students are participating in.

Teen Read Week Scavenger Hunt

Storybird Student Samples

Mrs. Murphy's Spanish students created incredible picture books showcasing their knowledge of Spanish vocabulary and sentence structure.  Below are a view great examples of their work.

Mis Amigos y Yo - Sample One
Mis Amigos y Yo - Sample Two
Mis Amigos y Yo - Sample Three