1st graders exploring clay

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.4

Two Murch Students Visit with Sec. of Education, Arne Duncan

As part of a new student discussion series with the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, called Student Voices, two 5th grade students from Murch, Sophia Galligan and Leonie Aksyonov, were invited to the Department earlier this month to speak in a discussion on topics of effective teaching and learning. This was a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have student's voice and ideas possibly affect policy changes in education for the whole country.

Sophia's reaction to the meeting:

"It was great! I'm so glad that I could be there to share my input.

It went roughly as I expected. It was a very enlightening experience.

I really enjoyed it. Thanks for considering me for this opportunity,

Leonie reaction to the meeting:

"The meeting went great and we basically only talked about how teachers inspired us. I told the story of how when I came from Russia in the middle of first grade, and how Ms. Cresswell got me caught up with everyone's level. It was funny how the secretary couldn't sit because of his back. Also, he left early because of another meeting. "

1st Graders finish painting unit

The 1st graders have been learning all about colors and how they can be tweaked by adjusting the amounts of color used; just like in cooking. In this unit, children observed and sketched various types of dragons from all over the world. They chose their favorite dragon sketch, enlarged them and then painted their large drawings using the skills they had gathered throughout the unit and the year. Enjoy these beautiful paintings!

1st Graders learn about realistic drawing (part 2, Ms. Cresswell's class)

For our painting unit we will be making stylistic paintings of animals inspired by Aztec representation of familiar animals. To begin we started with realistic drawings of animals. I explained to the kids that shapes are found everywhere, even in animals. I also taught them about using "details" such as fur, whiskers, feathers, claws, eyes, nose, etc are what makes the drawing even more realistic. They were so proud of their drawings that they wanted to take them home right away. They need the drawings to inform their paintings next week. Here they placed their names besides their most successful drawing out of the 6-7 they drew that day.