The students of Room 207 studied different types of graphs this summer. The students were given the task to create their very own graph that displayed data from a survey they administered. They formulated their own survey questions, collected data from other students, and chose what kind of graph they wanted to use to display the data. After many days of hard work, the students created poster-size graphs and were ready to share with the other students at Gillen Brewer! The students of other classes came to view the posters, see the process, and ask questions about their graphs. It was a very successful day sharing our graphs and displaying all our hard work!
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The Gillen Brewer School is buzzing with excitement as we begin our new school year. With new classrooms and new faces, we began our school year off by building community, with fun activities to familiarize ourselves with the classroom and routines. In Room 207, we are thrilled to introduce a new trio of teachers! Zana Milovanovic, a returning Associate Teacher, and Courtney Pusey, a first year Associate Teacher, have joined the 207 team, working closely with Michelle and the therapeutic team that assist on a daily basis. Room 207 has been conducting research during our Social Studies time to determine our classroom name that aligns to the schools theme! This year the school theme is dance and different forms of movement. The students have been exposed to many types of dances thus far, exploring the origin, time period, and specific details that pertain to that dance. The students then have the opportunity to try out the dance they learned about! The students of Room 207 have also been busy swimming, sprinklers, and trips to the park. Every day we take a trip to the park or the pool, where the students are engaging in activities from running through sprinklers to working with swimming instructors, practicing their swimming skills. On behalf of the teachers in Room 207, we are very excited to begin this school year with this great group of students. The Snapdragons have been studying China and Chinese culture, part of which is food! To learn even more about Chinese food, the Snapdragons went to the Museum of Food and Drink. There was a wall of Chinese takeout boxes that represented the number of Chinese restaurants in the United States, and the Snapdragons were shocked to find out that there are 50,000 Chinese restaurants across the country, which is more than the number of McDonalds, KFCs, and Burger Kings combined! The Snapdragons also got to see a fortune cookie machine and even restaurant menus that are over 50 years old. They were very surprised to see that in 1960, some Chinese food dishes cost under $1. Using paper circles, the students got to make fortune cookies and write their own fortunes. At the end of the tour, the Snapdragons got to pretend they were part of a Chinese family eating a meal together. The tour guide showed them some typical Chinese table manners and explained the important family traditions. They even got some fortune cookies to take home! As part of their study of China, the Snapdragons have been looking at different types of Chinese art. The Snapdragons have talked about Chinese architecture, Chinese printing, and even Chinese sculpture! During their art times, the Snapdragons have been looking at a Chinese sculpture of two people playing a game and using this to start to design their own board games. Since the actual sculpture is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Snapdragons got to go see it up close! The Snapdragons were tasked with completing a scavenger hunt that led them around the Asian Wing of the museum. The whole class started at a mural of Buddha, and then split up to find other Chinese art. They were able to see the sculpture of the two people playing a game, a sculpture of a Chinese dancer, a modern Chinese digital print that the students had seen in Art, and even sit in a Chinese garden. Each Snapdragon was able to complete the scavenger hunt, and it was great to hear about which piece of art each student enjoyed the most! The Snapdragons had such an exciting screen free week! They got to do so many cool new activities in the classroom, go to a different park than they usually do, and even have learning times on the roof. The Snapdragons started the week with a class meeting about screen free week where they came up with different screen free week activities that they could do as a class and at home. The students got to make slime out of glue, contact solution and baking soda. They added glitter to it and then used it to make all sorts of cool creations! Another one of the favorite activities from the week was making an iPhone out of food, which they then got to eat. The Snapdragons even got to spend some time outside during learning times, with book clubs on the roof and a telling time activity at Carl Schurz park. The students had such a great time exploring all of the different types of screen free activities they can do in and out of the classroom! The Snapdragons have been learning about the artist Kehinde Wiley in art. With Kristin, an educator at the Jewish Museum, the Snapdragons learned about how Wiley paints people not usually seen in art in positions of power. Together, the Snapdragons took pictures of each other in poses where they looked confident and powerful. The Snapdragons took a field trip to the museum so that they could see the Wiley painting and continue to explore this type of art. At the museum, they took a tour to see different paintings and then went to the studio to create the background for the pictures they had taken in art. To do this, the students used several materials including metallic squares and colorful paper with designs. The following week, Kirstin came back to GBS to help the Snapdragons finish their project. The Snapdragons created silhouettes of the photographs to add to their projects and put those together with the backgrounds they made at the museum. The projects show the many different sides of each students and the Snapdragons cannot wait to bring them home to share! On Monday, the Snapdragons had some special visitors in their classroom! Piggy, a three-legged dog, and Tod, his owner, came to share their experiences with the students. Tod told us about how he found Piggy in the Dominican Republic, and because Piggy had known suffering as a puppy he is now able to sense when others are suffering. Tod calls this his superpower, and even wrote a comic book about it! All of the Snapdragons took turns asking Tod questions about Piggy, and then got to pet this three-legged superhero. The Snapdragons were so gentle with Piggy and really enjoyed having him visit the classroom! Today was Dr. Seuss' birthday, and the Snapdragons had a great time celebrating! They started off the day reading a Scholastic article about how to tell if a book was written by Dr. Seuss. The Snapdragons learned to look for silly characters, zany stories, funny rhymes, wacky machines, and made-up words! In the middle of reading the article the students even got a very special surprise from the Cat in the Hat himself! The Cat in the Hat read the Snapdragons a great story, and then the students all got to take pictures with him. Some students even wanted to wear his hat! What a fun celebration! During Social Studies the Snapdragons have been learning about the Olympics, and this week the Snapdragons got to experience what it might be like to work as a team during the Olympics. Together, the Snapdragons were given several different challenges. The first was to complete a torch relay in the shortest amount of time. They were able to get the torch to each other in only 13 seconds! The second and third challenges involved arranging themselves in a specific order without teacher help. The Snapdragons had to line themselves up in two ways, shortest to tallest and then alphabetically. They were able to complete both challenges in under 5 minutes! The last challenge was to build the tallest structure they could using blocks. The Snapdragons enjoyed these challenges immensely, and it was a great opportunity to showcase their abilities to communicate with each other and work as a team! The Snapdragons participated in the school-wide Rockin' Readers' celebration because the school has reached 200,000 minutes of reading. To celebrate, all the students got to wear their pajamas to school. The Snapdragons got to speed skate on paper plates and eat a special popcorn snack! The Snapdragons also enjoyed getting some extra roof time in their PJs on the super warm day. What a great celebration! |
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