Mr. Baker's Visit

by Cody and Brandon

Do you know about Native Americans?  Well if you dont, we have some intersting facts.  On October 10th, on a Friday afternoon, at Conant Elementary, Ms. Diem's class and Mrs. Bedell's class went to the fine arts wing.  Once we reached the fine arts wing, we saw a guy named Mr. Baker.

Mr. Baker had white hair and a white goatee.  He wore round glasses and had an interesting voice that makes you want to listen.  He also had strict rules to follow.  He was super interesting!

Here are some facts we learned from Mr. Baker.  Did you know that you should hunt in the Fall or Autumn time?  You should do that because it's not too hot or not too cold.  Now, what should you do with all that meat?  If you leave it out, it will rot, so you should put it into a bog lake.  The bacteria will kill the germs and the meat will stay nice and not rot.

Native Americans played a game similar to lacrosse.  They used hard balls if they were going against different tribes, but if they were going against their own tribe, the used a leather ball filled with seeds.

Comic Life

Choosing a template.

In Comic Life, we are focusing on our Dear America books.  We are creating comics that summarize what we read.  We are focusing on narrating eight scenes from our book.  Everyone chose their own backgrounds, and the searched for pictures that fit our books.

After we did that, we used our graphic organizer (the wagon page) to help us know what to write.  We took each frame on the page to create an event with a picture and words.  In Jules' book, the main character ran away, so that is what she included in her summary.

Using our organizer to help with the text.

By Jules and Miles

The front page of a finished summary!

A page out of a longer summary.

Adding pictures.

Who We Are Summative Assessment Showcase!

Who We Are

As part of our research during Dear America, we researched a country we were assigned. Some of the countries were Russia, Poland, England, and Japan. As soon as you knew it we were making slides for a video. Some of the slides were food, push and pull factors, inventions, and about the authors. It probably became one of the most liked projects. 

Then we wrote a script for the video. After we were done with our script we had it checked. Then we recorded our script on Explain Everything which we did on the iPads. When we were done it was so cool! Then we presented our presentations and everyone loved it!

By Jacob and Daniel

Graphing Waves of Immigration

Using a ruler to highlight just the
 country we were studying.

Adding all the answers together.

As part of our research during Who We Are, we calculated the population of the country we were researching.  We added up every 20 years, and later found the total population of those years.  Then we went to a website to create a graph, showing all the waves of immigration.  We created the line graph because it was clearest to show the biggest wave of immigration.

It was fun to create the graphs!  Miles did a graph for the Netherlands and Jules did a graph for India.  We both thought that create a graph was fun!

By Jules and Miles

Recording the information on an organizer.

We did lots of math during Who We Are!

Culture Interviews

Dear America

We had to do a project on how the country we were studying influenced the United States.  This was part of our PYP unit "Who We Are." The central idea was the movement of people has an effect on culture.  

We did the project on the computers and netbooks.  It was hard work!  We had to use many different websites and books to do the project.  Everyone was studying different countries.  Most of our day was spent working on our projects because it took a long time!

You can watch our presentations here: 
Cultural Showcase

We'd love to hear what you think, so please leave comments for us!