Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Kindergarten Busy Barns Videos

This past week the kindergarten students in Mrs. Witkins' class have been busy using the school's iPads to create digital stories or videos about their trip to Busy Barns last week.  Mrs. Johnson showed students how to use the app Educreations to create personal stories of their trip.  Sometimes we experienced technical difficulties but all of the students maintained a positive attitude and learned a lot about the iPads and storytelling.



Check out each student’s video below by clicking on the link with his or her name.  They did a fantastic job!

Baden's Video

Annika's Video

Hannah's Video

Mayra's Video

Melanie's Video

Tiana's Video

Owen's Video

Karina's Video

Isaac's Video

Dalton's Video 

Dalton's 2nd Video  (due to earlier technical difficulties)

Kara's Video

Chase's Video

Yair's Video

Jennifer's Video

Bob's Video

Jack's Video

Gibson's Video

Nolan's Video

Katelyn's Video

Marques's Video

Ben's Video

Jacob's Video

Emma's Video

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Luther Scoop Donates Money to Jefferson County Humane Society

The Luther Scoop newspaper wrapped up another successful year and donated all proceeds to the Humane Society of Jefferson County.  At the beginning of the school year, the reporters voted on what charity they most wanted to help.  All of the reporters agreed that we should help our local Humane Society.

Most of the reporters this year were in fifth grade.  Each month students conducted interviews and wrote stories about school events, staff, students, and other exciting news.  The reporters then sold the newspapers during the lunch hour for two days each month.  Newspapers were sold for 10 cents each.  Many staff and students took advantage of the newspaper subscriptions that we offered, which included a free delivery service.  All of the students worked really hard to make the newspaper a success.   Thank you to all of our loyal customers who helped us raise $156.80 for the Humane Society.  We also want to thank some wonderful local businesses that donated prizes and gift certificates for our monthly contests.  The Fort Atkinson businesses that supported us were:  Burger King, Culver's, Dominos, Sentry, and Taco Bell/KFC. All of these businesses were extremely generous and helped support us in a great way.

The reporters were excited to visit the Humane Society to deliver our donation.

We were able to learn about the animal shelter while we were there.


Michelle gave us a tour of the shelter.  We were first able to visit the dog kennels.


Michelle did an awesome job teaching us about the shelter and the animals!

We were proud to be able to donate $165.80 to the Humane Society.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Luther ELL Students Attend Disney's Aladdin: Dual Language Edition

On Thursday all of the ELL students at Luther were rewarded with an experience of a lifetime.  Earlier this school year I wrote and submitted a grant application to Target and had my application chosen.  Target generously provided funds for tickets and transportation for us to attend the musical Disney's Aladdin:  Dual-Language Edition at the Playhouse at the Overture Center in Madison.  This experience was the perfect opportunity to celebrate all of the ELL students' hard work, both during the school year and on the ACCESS test.  The musical was in Spanish and English and beautifully interwove the two languages.     Students wanted to stay and watch the play again.  The bus ride home was filled with lots of conversations about favorite characters, funny parts, and highlights of the trip.  I really want to thank Target for supporting our trip and exposing my students to new possibilities.



  


Sunday, April 7, 2013

Dr. Seuss, LLI March Madness, Science Experiments, and an Easter Egg Hunt!

March was a busy month for the CLC Breakfast Club and for the other classes in the ELL program.  To celebrate one of my favorite months, we had an LLI March Madness tournament.  LLI is the reading intervention program that I use with my students to instruct them in reading and writing.  Each day my students had the opportunity to read a new book from the LLI system.  We created a tournament book bracket for each of the LLI groups.  Each day students had to decide between two different books and select which book was the favorite so that it could advance on to the next round of the tournament.  Students loved the LLI tournament!  They were excited to read the books and then make their selections.  Each time students were able to practice retelling the stories to remind their friends about the books.







We also celebrated Read Across America Week and Dr. Seuss's birthday.  We enjoyed some books written by Dr. Seuss, played some rhyming games, and even made a self-portraits and wrote about why we were special.





In March we also did some special science experiments.  We wanted to find out if certain objects would sink or float when placed in water.  We learned some pretty cool things.  Before we placed each item in the tub of water we recorded our predictions about each item as to whether or not we thought it would sink or float. 


Natanael gets ready to drop a crayon into the tub of water.


Anayeli is amazed to watch the clip sink to the bottom of the tub after Evelin dropped it in.

Anayeli gets ready to test another object.
One of our coolest objects to test was an orange.  Most of the students predicted that the orange would sink  so they were really surprised when it floated.

To make things even more interesting we then peeled the orange to see if it would make a difference.  The students were really excited to see that the peeled orange sunk to the bottom of the tub.  So why did this happen?  The orange peel is full of tiny pockets of air which gives the orange a lower density than water.  When the peel is gone the density of the orange is higher than the water, so it sinks.  Everyone loved doing the experiment and thinks science is fun!



Our last day of school in March was Thursday, March 28th.  The CLC Breakfast Club had a special Easter egg hunt in the classroom.  Students needed to find the hidden eggs and open each egg to reveal a tiny note with a unique letter and number on it.  Students then used the letters and numbers to help crack the code to an Easter message.

                           
Everyone jumped out of their chairs at the signal to start the egg hunt.

Anayeli was so excited to find an egg.

Keven and Evelin look carefully around the room.

Milo, Anayeli, and Natanael used the clues inside the eggs to add letters to the mystery message.

Milo found a blue egg.

Milo found one of the letters for the mystery message.

Natanel quickly cracked open an egg to reveal a new clue.

Evelin is excited to see what is inside the egg.

Evelyn and Brittany hunted around the room for eggs.

Brittany found an egg hiding by our dinosaur books.

Brittany and Evelyn cracked open the eggs so they could find another clue for the puzzle.

Evelyn found an egg hiding by the computer.

Evelin found a gigantic pink egg!




Friday, February 1, 2013

Family Art Night

Tonight families of my students were invited to attend a special "Family Art Night" at school.  Each month I have been hosting different outings for the Latino families in our school.  Some reasons for having these monthly events are to get my families more comfortable with coming to school, to have the families get to know me better, to engage in fun activities as a family, and to make connections with other Latino families in our school.  We had great attendance at this month's event, especially for a cold and snowy February evening.


Watch a short video about our "Family Art Night" by clicking below.


Everyone had a chance to share their artistic abilities by painting, coloring, and drawing beautiful masterpieces.  Families worked together to create whimsical Japanese fish windsocks, painted sun catchers, and carefully designed their own bracelets and necklaces.  It was great to see how everyone worked together to create some amazing pieces of art.