Projects

Town of Portland Diorama Project

In our first social studies unit, we studied our town. We talked about the different services, goods, restaurants, and schools in our community. This led to our culminating activity, a diorama of one of the important buildings in our community. Click on the picture to the right to see a slideshow of the students' work.

Landforms Webquest Project

We worked with Miss Ferrara's class on this project! Students paired up into teams of five and completed a webquest about landforms. A webquest is like an online lesson where students are given links and other technology sources to investigate and create their own knowledge about a topic. Each group chose a landform, researched it, created a poster, and presented that poster to the class. Click to see pictures of students with their projects and some information about their landforms.

Biography Project

We learned about important people in history. Children learned about ordinary and extraordinary individuals who have contributed to our national character and made a difference in people’s lives. They should understand how the diverse citizens of a nation can share a common history. In this project, each student read about one important person in our nation’s history and explained how that person’s actions have made a difference for our country.

Click to read who each student researched and the information they found out!

Click here for biography websites to help research your person.

The Monster Exchange Project

As per the website, "Monster Exchange is designed to encourage the development of reading and writing skills while integrating Internet technology into the classroom curriculum." We paired up with Mrs. Raines’ class. Each student designed an original picture of a monster. The students then wrote a description of the monster. The true challenge involved redrawing a picture as close to the original picture as possible using only the written description of the monster.

Click on the picture to go to our class page on the Monster Exchange website!

Our Flat Stanley Project

In our class, we have read the story Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. This book is about a young boy named Stanley who is accidentally squished "as flat as a pancake" when a bulletin board falls on him. Stanley is very, very flat but otherwise fine. The story goes on to tell how Stanley discovers some real advantages to being flat. He can slide under doors, go down into sidewalk grates, and even fold himself up small enough to fit into an envelope and be mailed to California (from a city far away in the USA) for an exciting vacation.

To integrate social studies and learn about different places around the United States, we have made Flat Travelers to send to host families. Our Flat Travelers will be sent back to us with information about the area he/she traveled. Click here to see where our Flat Travelers have visited and interesting facts we learned. Just click on the push-pins on the map. Can you find your Flat Traveler?

State of Connecticut Book Project

While awaiting the return of our flat travelers, students were each assigned one page to complete about Connecticut. Students will research the state flag, tree, bird, insect, animal, products, lighthouses, landforms, and many of the important people and places in Connecticut. Click on the picture of Connecticut to see each student with their part of the project!

The Cheetah and the Sloth

Click here to see our play we did with Miss Ferrara's class, spring 2012. This play ties into the character counts trait we were studying, fairness.

Students Write Fables

After learning about folk tales, the students had a chance to write their own fables. Their challenge was to make sure that their fable included all the elements of a fable that we learned. These included animal characters, personification, a conflict, and a moral. Click on the picture to view these fables as they act them out with puppets.

Country Website - An Independent Project

Four second graders worked together to put together this website about different countries they have studied.

Titanic Play

As an independent project, Grace decided to study the Titanic. She wrote a play as her culminating project. Click here to see the video of the play.