The School Garden: Progress!

A Sweet William in bloom

Our little garden at school is really coming along!  Little by little, my writing groups, social skills groups, fifth graders, and classroom of kiddos with autism are making a difference in this little plot of land by our basketball courts!  (See the "before" photos here.)   It's so neat to see the changes from day to day in the garden.  It's like a little bit of magic when a new plant takes root or flower blooms.  

And the neatest thing?  The big, burly, ultra cool fifth grade boys who beg me to let them work in the garden during their lunch breaks.  Apparently pulling weeds is all the rage these days.

Butterflies on Daisies

A pond flower...just gorgeous! (I took this with my phone, but will have to get a better shot with my real camera for you soon!)

planting some herbs (rosemary & basil)

This is my new favorite picture in all the world!

pulling weeds

What little project is bringing you joy right now?

Speechy Sunday: Black History Projects and Graphic Organizers Galore!

On Friday, our school wrapped up our school-wide unit on Black History.  As I walked through the hallways and classrooms to see what each grade level and each class had been working on, I was so pleased to see an overwhelming use of graphic organizers in our students' final projects.  I love graphic organizers and swear by them as visual ways to help us learn more, store more, and more easily retrieve more information later, as well.

Anyway, I thought you'd get a kick out of seeing some of the ways different grade levels used graphic organizers.

There were timelines.

There were cluster organizers.

There were pie charts.

There were causal flow charts.

I think that the students at my school really learned an amazing amount about the Civil Rights Movement, slavery, and black history in the past 6 weeks.   And I bet they'll remember these projects and the information they organized for themselves in such lovely visual ways, for years to come.



What school project from your childhood do you still remember?