The Daily Item
MILLVILLE — Fourth and fifth graders at Greenwood Friends School presented projects which they have been working on for the past few weeks. Some students chose to create dioramas while others experimented with costume design and still others chose to exhibit original artwork. The presentations were to serve as accompanying pieces to students’ explanations of their chosen books’ plots, characters, and settings.
During writers’ workshop, kindergarteners and first graders received individual composition books to serve as a journal throughout the rest of the school year. Students learned about the purpose of journaling and looked at examples of writing using thoughts, stories, and drawings.
Middle school students are utilizing an e-reader program, Subtext, to explore Robinson Crusoe. They reviewed how to write cohesive, satisfying endings in writing. They also viewed the next portion of Michael Palin’s Himalaya, focused on the Tibetan Plateau.
Fourth and fifth graders began a new language arts unit on mythology. They are reading a Greco-Roman myth about Eros/Cupid and Psyche and they are writing some myths of our own.
Middle schoolers are discussing global climate change, and the fact that new colors had to be created on temperature charts to represent the incredible heat that Australia is experiencing. They are learning about the history of photovoltaics and how solar cells are currently made in preparation for looking at how this “green” energy could be improved by looking to nature for inspiration. Specifically they will model plants and the process of photosynthesis when they build dye sensitized solar cells that use the pigments in berries for photon capture.