Daily Summary for Week 2

Wow, am I exhausted. There was a LOT going on in our school today. Here is a brief recap:

• Grade 1 is focusing on "Protecting Wild Animals" and is going to make an Endangered Animals Podcast. Ms. Perez is going to do some research on finding out endangered animals local to Brooklyn and we are going to connect this project to her Science content. Today students revisited PowerPoint and learned what a podcast is. We even created a simple introductory podcast with each student introducing him or herself!
  
• Grade 2 is focusing on "Planting Trees" and is going to document their real-world tree-planting efforts on their class wiki. The wiki is created and students learned how to download pictures from the Internet. Ms. Newman is going to post a link to the wiki we created to this blog so everyone can see.
• Grade 3 is focusing on "Preventing Pollution" and is going to make a series of PSAs (Public Service Announcements). This will be a combination of informational website with video and graphics designed to convince the public that pollution is preventable. The class learned what a PSA is and looked at some of the elements of PSAs by visiting the Ad Council website. Ms. Catania is going to help her students select topics and introduce Internet research by creating a PortaPortal. Students will have to justify why the website they want to use will be useful in their research.
• Grade 4 is focusing on "Ways People Can Go Green" and is going to make a news show documenting their efforts. Each cooperative group will have a specific topic, such as composting, using recycled objects, etc., and develop a segment of the news program around this topic. Today, students learned some basic tools and tips of Internet research, including how to evaluate the value of a website. Ms. Liebmann created a PortaPortal site to collect their links and students are going to use this to complete a homework assignment about the difference between point and nonpoint source pollution. How smart are they?!?

Well, you can see why I'm exhausted, but it is definitely the good kind of exhausted. I'm look forward to seeing each teacher post to the blog this week! Let me know if you have any questions or problems and I will see you next Friday!