Charleston Memories

Our much anticipated fieldtrip to Charleston, SC has come and gone, but I am sure the memories will last forever.

  My love for sea turtles sparked after reading The Beach House by Mary Alice Monroe several years ago. The author is an environmentalist from Charleston with a passion for our state reptile, the loggerhead sea turtle. In her series, she writes about the sea turtle hospital. Of course, it has been on my 'bucket list' ever since. I could not have chosen a better group of students to learn along side as we researched and raised money for these gentle giants. Meeting Yawkey, the rare leatherback, was a once in a lifetime opportunity. She was released soon after we left that day. I think she arrived and departed just in the right time frame for us to meet her, and we are so glad we did! 

We hope our contributions to the sea turtle hospital will help heal these sweet loggerheads pictured below. 

    My husband and I visited Boone Hall Plantation the day after we were married in Charleston. This place has a special place in my heart. I was excited to return nearly 7 years later with 20 children that have completely stolen my heart. I am so thankful for their eagerness to learn each day.

Boone Hall served as our kick off for our next inquiry based unit on the Civil War.  Stay tuned to learn more! I am really excited about our upcoming unit! 

To read more Charleston Memories from our amazing group of authors, click on our Kid Blog link! They are thrilled to expand their audience outside of our classroom and across the world. 

Save the Turtles Ornament- Get Yours Today!

I'm not sure about you, but the children behind these sweet faces continue to amaze me more each day. They have so selflessly given their time, research, and now crafting skills to help raise awareness of one of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. Our amazing students are working on ornaments to sell, with all the proceeds being donated to The South Carolina Aquarium Sea Turtle Rescue. Pretty amazing, right?!?

Our ornaments are in high demand not only in our school, but across the nation! We want to give special thanks to New York Times Best Selling Author and environmentalist, Mary Alice Monroe. She highlighted our ornaments and our students efforts on her personal Facebook page. The teachers and administration are working together to create an online ordering system available to the public soon. As for now, every third grader at OES is creating ornaments.


Oakland Elementary is an All*Star school because we seek to teach the whole child. Our curriculum goes far beyond the standards. We instill the importance of confidence and know that  FAILure is First Attempts at Learning. We strive to instill a love for learning and passion for people, animals, and nature. Every child has a name, a heart, a body, and a mind, and as we teach, we honor the whole child. We are proud of our test scores, but the numbers cannot compare to the happiness in the faces you see below.
Click the links to read a few of our students' personal blog posts:
William's Blog
Breanna's Blog

Today, and everyday, I am proud to be an Oakland All*Star!

Animal Research and Blended Learning

We are beginning our Animal Research Projects. The students are learning about six animals in various habitats, with very different adaptions, but all share one commonality- they are endangered.

Through their research and reading mentor texts, our students will write feature articles to share information about their animal and raise awareness on how we can help protect their habitats. 

Research can get messy! We ask that you enter our classroom with caution! 

Building a Habitat for a Sea Turtle

On Tuesday, our crew built the perfect habitat for a sea turtle. Ellison and Wyatt blogged about the experience. Click on the links to see what they had to say!

Ellison's Post

Wyatt's Post

How Can We Raise Money for Sea Turtles?

This morning we started our day with journaling ideas on how we can raise money for the South Carolina Sea Turtle Rescue in Charleston, SC.
I was amazed at the ideas that our 3rd graders came up with.
Please click on the link below to see their responses.
Sea Turtle Rescue Fund


We will provide more information next week on what we will do to raise money for these beautiful, ancient creatures!!!

Meet Amelia and King

The day finally arrived after weeks of planning! You would think that I won a $500 shopping spree to one of my favorite stores. Although that would be AMAZING.... 

We are learning about two sweet Loggerhead Sea Turtles that were rescued along our coastline. The sea turtles were transported to the Sea Turtle Rescue Center in Charleston, SC. They have since been treated and released.

The students are learning more about Amelia and King in our Daily 5 Stations, again, using our Blended Learning approach. The students are completing a "Sea Turtle Hospital Doctor Form". They will use this form to add facts to their Literary Nonfiction piece on Life as a Sea Turtle.

We would love to share their stories with you. Please click on the BlendSpace Link below.

Amelia and King 

Physical and Behavioral Adaptations

This week started our PBL Unit "From Turtles to Tigers". Our driving question is "How do animals adapt to changes in their environment?"

From the wise words of Kid President, "If you want to change the world, you gotta know about it." Therefore, we must first learn what adaptation means and the two types of adaptations. The students are using the Blended Learning approach in our Daily 5 Stations to learn at their own pace what adaptation means and determining the two types, physical and behavioral. This is multi-tasking at its finest. While the students are learning on the computers and ipads, I have the opportunity to work with another group of students in a small group setting on their reading goal.

After everyone has had the opportunity to visit the Technology Station, we will go over our Adaptation Charts.

Never heard of BlendSpace? No worries! I just learned about it at the beginning of the school year. Check out the BlendSpace we created and are using in Daily 5 this week!

Adaptations

Click on the hyperlink above and simply click the play button on the left side of the web page.