Tutorial: VCCV Spelling Pattern

Karissa and Keya had fun making a PuppetPals video explaining how to break words into syllables that have a VCCV spelling pattern. When you have a two syllable word with the VCCV pattern, break between the two consonants! 

Can you think of any words you can break using this VCCV tip?

Here are a few: 

rab • bit 

rep • tile 

can • dy

What did you think of their tutorial?

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Charlotte's Web Collaborative Cartoons

We just finished reading Charlotte's Web, by E. B. White. To complement the book, we made a collaborative slide show. Each of the twenty-two chapters got a summary slide. Students worked in pairs to create each summary slide. Cartoons helped tell the story!

First, students picked a chapter. Then they went to Scholastic's Charlotte's Web Make-Your-Own Comic. It is fabulous!

Once there, students picked a layout. We recommend template two. 

In addition, two comic cells per slide looks best. 

There are many comic options. For example, there are characters, objects, settings, and speech bubbles. Students clicked and dragged the items that went with their chapter. The funniest item was the pile of manure that Wilbur adored to lay in. :-) 

Students took screen shots of their comic cells and then inserted the screen shots in the collaborative Google slide show. 

Behold! Our Collaborative slide show!

After learning how to make a web, we decided to make one in our room! How did we make this web?

Photo by Maddie

Which slide was your favorite?

Which character do you like the best and why?

Which character changed the most? 

If you want to be clever, leave a comment from the point-of-view of a character.  :-) Great idea, Michael.

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Origami Stars

Each month, parents volunteer to come to class and teach a seasonal art project to the students. Today, we made a beautiful origami star! Origami is the ancient Japanese art of paper-folding. In Japanese, oru means fold and kami means paper. 

The two origami stars who put together this craft were Karissa's mom and Abby's mom.  

Each student needed two identical sheets of origami paper. 

One side had a design and one side was white. 

There were many steps. Since we were doing origami, many steps involved folding. Students were encouraged to carefully fold and heavily crease the origami paper after each step. 

After folding one sheet four times, it was time to measure and mark four areas to be cut. The moms provided a nonstandard measuring tool to mark the length of each cut. 

Next, it was time to make the four cuts. It reminded us of the time we made the compass rose! Each cut was at a cardinal direction: north, south, east, and west.  

The next step was to do some additional folds where the cuts were made.  

Finally, we glued the folds in a way that created a 3-dimensional point.   

We then repeated all the steps with the second piece of origami paper. The two 4-pointed stars were glued together to form this 8-pointed star.

When we were done making the stars, we went outside and created a panoramic picture. Do you notice anything unusual about this panoramic?  (Hint: Look at the person on the end.) 

 Click to Enlarge this panoramic picture. 

What did you like about this parent-lead craft project?

What other origami project would you like to create? 

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