Friday Last Day

It was a sad, sad day. I had to admit to myself that the week was over and I had to go home. On our last day we only had 1 hour to do something fun. Of course we kayaked. When we got back we cleaned our cabin and presented our projects.

Julie presented her idea about a field trip to a farm. She wants her students to see where our food comes from and the work that's involved to make that possible. Another idea of hers was to travel back to the farm to see the changes per season. 

Jason did a presentation on a DBQ of the geography of Adirondacks. He had many different ideas for questions to write essays and short answer questions. Some of those ideas/questions were: (1) To write about the photograph of Adirondack furniture on display at the adk museum (2) write about a photograph on Huntington building (3) Song lyrics of a lumberjack- whats the life of the lumberjack based on lyrics (upbeat life), (4) and a quote of a lumberjacks life. (danger of life). Jason's presentation blew the rest of us away. I don't know where he found the time. Ohhh, he didn't go kayaking with us. That must be it. 

Nicole and Courtney worked together: They created a Glogster for the Adirondacks on trees and the background of the Adirondacks. The Glogster was a collection of links and videos about the Adirondacks. After the lesson in class, Nicole and Courtney want to trip to the Adirondack Museum, and take the class on a nature walk to identify on their own from what they learned.

Cherith created a picture book for 1^st grade about bears (coloring book). Her book compared bears and humans in ways of where they find/use food water and shelter. Her book taught about how bears are losing their shelter, how bears find shelter, how its near water, and how they store food, and hibernation. In addition, Cherith would have her students circle site words, sounds, and color the pictures. 

Lindsey's project was to build a garden at school with her kindergartners. She began a letter to the parents and local businesses for support and letting them know what shes doing, standards covered and why to do this. The lessons she hopes her students learn are life skills, problem solving (how to keep animals out, how to grow successfully), and responsibility to keep plants alive to work together. Lindsey created a lists of things that might need to be donated: fence, something to create an elevated area, soil, seeds, and hands on help with creating the garden.

My project began with trees in North America. Then it was broken down to leaf identification. Finally I reduced it to North American Maple Trees Leaf Identification. The beginning of the project/lesson was on interactive Smart Board activity about leaves using vocabulary words with a microscopic picture of a leaf. Terms: cuticle, xylem, stomata, pholoem, epidemis, mesophyll, palisade layer, and guard cell. The lesson/Smart Board activity continued to list the Maple Trees common in Adirondack/North American area and how to identify the differences between each leaf. That was all I was able to complete. The activity was going to fall into photosynthesis and how leaves change color, and the common colors of Maple tree leaves.