For our school Technology Night the first grade classes created a Brick Lab build to represent diversity. We tied this activity in to our studies of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Each student created a brick person that represented who they are, then we attached tags with so that the visiting families could find their child's build.
During the winter we read a story with very unique artwork of birds in birch trees with falling snow all around them. Each student got to experiment with different watercolor techniques. Once they were dry students drew each part of their bird, cut it out, and glued it together creating a sort of collage. Students created the birch trees with tempera paint flicked across paper with a piece of cardboard. The bulletin board above is the hallway display I created incorporating larger birch trees and a quote from the story. Below is a closer view of individual student work.
Our school did a week-long anti-bullying campaign. I led our class through read-alouds and class discussions about how we can be helpful bystanders or protect ourselves if we are ever a victim. The last story we read was How To Be a Bucket Filler and together we made a class poster with each student's statement of how they can be a bucket filler..
Dr. Seuss Week was a great celebration and study of some of the most well-known Dr. Seuss stories. From The Lorax to There's a Wocket In My Pocket, every day was filled with a different project centered around each story.
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This is a Lorax bulletin board I created for a separate Boise State assignment, but I was able to recycle it to use during Dr. Seuss week! (Sketching & coloring the Lorax alone took two hours!) 
After reading There's a Wocket In My Pocket students created their own pocket and wocket on a stick that could pop in and out. To work on rhyming words students had to come up with a name that rhymed with wocket, nonsense words were acceptable for this assignment :)
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While studying geometry, students worked with sorting two dimensional shapes. Working in small groups, there were different materials that needed to be sorted. As a team they needed to decide how they would sort the objects and justify their sorting to the rest of the class when we shared the results. Here are some of the different groups they created. Students typically sorted objects based on whether they had straight or curved lines or both, color, or whether the shapes had very pointy or not very pointy corners.
For our unit on countries students had the opportunity to travel to other classrooms and experience lessons from other teachers on several countries. In my class I created paper suitcases for the students to keep their passport in as well as any projects and paper currency from the countries they visited. In our classroom we studied Australia, China and Mexico. For our study of Chinese family traditions (one of our reporting topics) we read about Chinese New Year. As a final activity students painted watercolor backdrops that would serve as a puppet stage. After watercoloring, students used straws to blow black tempera paint across the page to create trees. We then dot painted cherry blossoms on the trees. We were able to talk about creating the effect of silhouettes of an ancient Chinese temple, trees and a landscape. After our stages were complete students made dragon puppets mounted on popsicle sticks. They loved making their dragons "dance" in front of their backdrop. We were able to display these pieces of artwork in the library, which was a great source of pride for all of the students.
Technology is creating new innovations in education every day. In my classroom students worked with ipads, new computer programs, and I had the opportunity to work one-on-one with a student to create a short video about penguins. Given one student's success, I see no reason why all of my students the couldn't learn how to use it. The biggest challenge is having enough time for 22 students to share 5 classroom computers. Perhaps by collaborating with the computer teacher we could use our lab time to use the site. The link below will take you to the video!
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