Students in the Write

Fourth grade students in Mrs. Zerafa’s class have been communicating via email with “e-pals” from Willington, England. Ms. O’Brien, technology specialist, established this activity in November with the children writing letters to one another. The third and fourth graders from England then sent pictures of points of interest in their community.

Washington Irving’s fourth grade students took a walking tour of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow and photographed historic landmarks and places of interest. In the computer lab, the children researched and recorded the information to be “pod casted” to our friends across the pond. We hope they (and you) will enjoy our final product.

The eight minute full length project (11MB, please allow the project to load)

Click to view a 20 second excerpt (.5 MB)

Featured Town: Bearmont

Class Congresswoman, Claire, says, “Come to Bearmont, Your children will be amazed with all of the kinds of bears in the zoos and in the wild. (P.S. no bear attacks, good bears only)” Are you interested? Click here for information.

This project integrates social studies, reading, writing, listening, speaking, art, and technology. After studying our own community and reading about others, students began creating their own towns. They included community helpers that are important to make a community thrive: police officers, firefighters, stores, homes, and transportation to name a few. We created town maps using a program called Neighborhood Map Machine in the computer lab.

In our writing piece used for the pod casts, students honed their skills in paragraph writing. Students have been studying main idea and supporting details. Using graphic organizers, we examined our words choice so as to persuade someone to move to our town. We also included a closing sentence to sum up our thoughts. Some of our advanced writers used graphic organizers to learn when to break for a new paragraph and use transitional words and phrases to help their writing flow.

The children were very creative and had a great deal of fun while working. We hope you enjoy listening to our writing. Maybe you will find a town that is just right for you!

Click here to see and hear about our towns.

Our intrepid travel reporter, Nicole, from Mrs. Calvert’s second grade class, has the scoop on New York City. If you want to have a good time in the city, let Nicole’s expert itinerary give you ideas! Click here to listen.

“My Trip to New York City” as read by Nicole

Click here to visit the Online Morse Gallery
posted 3/31/05

Vincent van Gogh (born 1853- died 1890) was not well known during his lifetime, but today he is one of the most famous painters of all time. He was born in Holland but after deciding to become an artist at 27, he spent most of his life in France. Van Gogh discovered painting after he had tried and failed at other professions from art dealer to preacher. All of van Gogh’s 800 or so paintings were created in the last ten years of his life.

He tried to express his thoughts and emotions in his artwork, often working day and night without stopping, spending all of his money on paint, and even forgetting to eat. Van Gogh’s paintings are filled with color, swirling images, and intense feelings.

Van Gogh is known for his contrasting colors and his impasto style filled with hatch strokes and rolling, pulsing motions of his paintbrush. Van Gogh would stroke his paint onto the canvas with either a brush or a knife.

The third grade looked at van Gogh’s wheat field paintings that he did in the last years of his life. Then they sketched their own wheat fields onto canvas board and used brushes and palette knives to apply the paint. Just like Vincent!

Click here to visit the Online Morse Gallery
posted 3/31/05