Monday, April 21, 2014

Extra! Extra! Read All About it!


Planning a Trip this Summer?

Have you thought about staying in Indiana?

This past month our writing goal was to create high interest list articles.  Our class has been working hard to create list articles about famous Indiana Landmarks.  In this project our main goal was to work on writing...but along the way we have learned so much more.  We looked carefully at magazines and their page layouts.  We learned how to create page layouts of our own using the program Pages.  We also had to do a little research about our Indiana landmarks before we could start writing.  We learned a little more about collecting research in Google Docs and organizing the information we found.  This project helped us learn more about Indiana...which is part of our 4th grade social studies standards.  It took a lot of hard work...but the end products were amazing.  I am really proud of my class and all of their hard work!

We wanted to share what we learned with our community.  We found a spot outside the office that we could hang up our articles for the whole school to read.  Even visitors to the school can read our articles while waiting in the office.  We have even placed copies of our articles in the magazine file so that people are able to take copies home to help them plan their vacations this summer.  So...the next time you walk into the school feel free to take one of our articles.  We hope they help you plan a great summer vacation.




Friday, April 4, 2014

Big Universe

We have access to a new program for reading called Big Universe.  This is a great resource that provides lots of books for the kids to access to read.  They can search for books by their reading level, genre, interest, and more.  Each student has their own log in.  Once they log in they can add books to their personal bookshelves.  They can add or delete books from their shelves at their leisure.  I can also assign books to their shelves that I would like for them to read.  We have been using it during our independent reading time this past week and all of the kids have really enjoyed reading from it.

Here is the best part...they can access their bookshelf from any computer.  They have access 24/7 to great books!  They will even have access over the summer.  The following link will take you directly to the website so that you can check it out.  Just log in and enjoy some great books!

Big Universe

The students usernames and passwords are the same as they use to log into their computers.
Our group username is tcsc-in