The Cosmonautics Memorial Museum :0)

This summer my family visited Russia. One of the highlights of our trip was the visit to 

The Cosmonautics Memorial Museum in Moscow.

I wanted to share some pictures :0). When teaching space science, it is always good to know both sides of the "space race". The experience was simply amazing!!! Enjoy :0)

The base of The Cosmonautics Memorial Museum. Look at the details and see. Even though it was Gagarin who was the first man in space, it took a group of people, a healthy team to send him there!!! 

If you look close, you could even see the first dog, Laika :0). Recognizing every effort!!!

Belka and Strelka

Sputnik

Biography/ Time Line/ Citations

This project is actually super unique and unusual :0). One of our stories in the Reading Book was written as a biography of Abraham Lincoln. But....... the author used Abraham Lincoln's quotes to depict different stages of his life and his view points. So....... this Time Line truly has NO dates at all :0). It is organized with the help of quotes and chronological events that defined those quotes in the story. This way I was able to teach my class how to draw the evidence from the text (the quotations/ citations) and elaborate upon them (explain what they mean). WOW!!!!!!! EXTREMELY UNUSUAL!!!!! This idea came into my head in the middle of the night :0). Yes :0). It challenged both my class and me. It also introduced great study of the "dateless" Time Line :0).

Christmas Class Activities :0)

My wonderful friend shared this project idea :0). We spent several days creating these ornaments and building memories for the students to cherish for many years with their families. My own children were once students in her class, and our family's Christmas tree is proudly decorated with these treasures every year :0). I was inspired by such dedication and love towards students. What a great way to build memories!!!

We also made cards and wrote shape poems :0)!!!!!

My Totally Reading Christmas Tree :0)

I got this idea from a friend that posted her tree picture on Face Book :0). I got very inspired and decided to make one for my classroom :0).

Science Lab: Measuring Mass in Grams

I just wanted to share a great Science Lab that I held with my class when we learned about grams as measure units. It was a lot of fun and the students were able to grasp the idea of a gram (its weight).

Native American Research and Dioramas; Seminoles DBQ

I divided my two classes into five Florida Native American Tribes. Each tribe had about a month to collect the information for the research paper. Each student presented a diorama about the tribe he or she was assigned to. I also worked with the students on the essay about their tribe. The whole project was fascinating!!!!! Our last Thursday before Thanksgiving we celebrated with the great Native American Gathering, where the students presented their dioramas and we danced with the Native American Indians in a circle of "PEACE" :0)

Since I also wanted to model how to really conduct a research to my class, I was working on a DBQ "Seminole's Resistance" together with both classes during my reading block at the same time as the students were working on theirs at home. I made the documents into large colorful posters that the students could relate to and see clear details. I also modeled the process of a DBQ study. As a final product, we wrote an informational essay about Seminole resistance. This way the students were exposed to the proper way of writing an informational essay prior to submitting their own. We worked on good introduction, evidence and elaboration, and also strong conclusion. I also focused this time on encouraging the class to refer to the documents that they were drawing the evidence from. Well... we still need to improve in this area :0).

Owl Pellet Dissection

It was soo wonderful to be able to host our own "Science Lab" :0)!!!!! We had fun dissecting the owl pellets and documenting our research. As a final product, we made our Owl Research Banners :0).