Mrs. Dunlap's Class

SILENT AUCTION ACTIVITY

Join Mrs. Dunlap and Mrs. Kanwisher for an afternoon of fun, food and excitement!  We will start our afternoon with a nature walk along the Chattahoochee River followed by yummy pizza at Mellow Mushroom.

A perfect end to the outing will be ice cream treats at Busters!  BId quickly as our day out will be "scooped" up quickly..

MAY 2008

It's hard to believe another school year is coming to a close and what an amazing year it has been. With the few short weeks remaining we still have exciting activities to experience.

First Grade: Stepping Into Target is in full swing as we end the year with new Cinderella stories, songs and the tapping of "Happy Feet."

Second & Third Grade: Our unit over "Puzzled by the Past" is culminating with the study of ancient Rome and the Mayan culture along with bridge building.

Fourth Grade- We are looking forward to our Medieval Festival on May 21.  Our castles are nearing completion as we complete this unit.

Fifth Grade- Tuesday, May 13, will be an amazing day with the dissection of sharks on the menu.  We have prepared the past few weeks by learning the external and internal parts of the shark to help with this process.

APRIL 2008

First grade continues to learn more about "feet" and different cultural versions of Cinderella. Listen carefully as this class is in the process of composing a song for "Stepping Into Target".  We are writing new verses each week.

We are continuing to enjoy our unit over "Ancient Civilizations" for the 2nd and 3rd grades as we travel back in time to study Greece and Italy.  Students have been improving their powerpoint skills by experimenting with new templates, images and animation in their presentations over inventions from the past. 

The Medieval Times activities are well underway as we prepare for our end of the year festival for 4th grade.

Our fifth graders are carefully learning the internal and external parts of the shark to better understand our upcoming dissection activity. 

Remember that CRCT testing starts on April 23.  Get plenty of rest and eat a healthy breakfast to help you do your best!

March 2008

Welcome to spring in Target!  Excitement is lurking in and around the rooms of "paradise".  First graders are enjoying their "Stepping Into Target" while learning about different cultural stories of Cinderella.  Our second and third graders will experience an in-house field trip from the Carlos Museum.  Mummies come alive as Museum teachers explore the history and process of mummification and its importance to the ancient Egyptians through an engaging and interactive slide presentation of objects in the Carlos collection. Students will then become "artists of the temple" and prepare the portrait mask, broad collar, amulets, and jewelry while the "mummy" is readied for burial.  Fourth grade continues to explore medieval times and we will celebrate with a "great feast" later this semester. Meanwhile, our fifth grade is preparing for our annual trip to Cumberland Island on March 12-14.  Cumberland Island is Georgia's largest and southernmost barrier island. Pristine maritime forests, undeveloped beaches and wide marshes whisper the stories of both man and nature. We will walk in the footsteps of early natives, explorers, and wealthy industrialists. What an opportunity to explore such an area.

Reminders

*Please remember to pack healthy snacks for our first and second graders.  Target lunch time is much later than their normal lunch time.

* Don't forget to set your clocks ahead!

Brainteasers, Puzzles and More

Check out the following websites for more challenging activities.

http://www.setgame.com/set/puzzle_frame.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/crosswords/setpuzzle.html

http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/braint.htm

http://www.sudoku.com/

Happy Valentine's Day

February 2008

We are off and running with our new units for Spring semester.  Check out your child's target notebook for updated work and projects.

Welcome Back

January 2008

 

First Grade- Stepping Into Target

Welcome to our program!  We will use fairy tales to introduce our students to the multiple intelligences as well as the learning progression expressed in Bloom’s Taxonomy.  Students will become more aware about higher level thinking and problem-solving using fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration.

 

                        

Second & Third Grade- Puzzled by the Past

Students will explore past cultures to help them better understand how they have impacted our present-day culture and help them prepare for the future.  By learning about other civilizations, students start to better understand their own world.  Beginning with pre-history, we will explore how our ancestors communicated and left their stories for us to discover.

Fourth

Grade-

Castles

, Keeps, and Kingdoms

Students will learn about life during medieval times through this unit based on language arts and social studies standards.  We will explore the history, culture of this time period and connect our traditions still present today that originated in the Middle Ages.  Students will evaluate the feudal system and compare it to the government today.  Classic characters from literature will be discovered as we research this time period.  Critical thinking and reading skills are put into practice this semester as we uncover the secrets of the Middle Ages.

 

                     

Fifth Grade- Predators of the Aquatic Biome

Listen carefully…. Do you hear the theme to the movie “JAWS”?  Our students will learn through this interdisciplinary unit about oceanography, biology, and environmental science.  By increasing our knowledge of life in the underwater biome, we will gain a better understanding, a different perspective and a greater appreciation for the shark’s symbiotic relationship in this habitat.  Extensions for this unit include our class dissection of sharks along with our trip to

Cumberland

Island

.  More specific information will come home at a later date.

December, 2007

We are currently evaluating new students for target therefore; classes will be finalized before students leave for the winter holidays. Target classes for new and current students will resume in January.

Special congratulations to our robotics team for placing 3rd in the area of research at

East

Cobb

Middle School

on December 1, 2007.  We competed against 32 other elementary and middle schools.

Supply List for New Students

3 ring binder for class

Dividers

Pencils (regular and colored)

Scissors

Have a terrific winter break and we look forward to starting new units in January.

Wonderful, creative experiences have surrounded our students the past few weeks.  It has been a pleasure watching your children grow with new discoveries and knowledge expansion.

2^nd Graders have discovered and learned about bat anatomy, new bat species, habitats, classification plus so much more.

3^rd graders are about to solve the ‘The Great Who Dunnit” mystery… Was it Salty the Cracker, Jewel Treasure, or Nelmira Simpson?  What was the motive?   Stay tuned for the amazing results.

4^th graders researched the tropical rainforest high and low (literally)… We have studied about animal and plant inhabitants, the layers of the strata, worldwide locations, weather and climate while culminating this unit of study with the construction of the rainforest model.  Also, the fourth graders had a fantastic experience touring the “frog” exhibit at Fernbank.  Students were able to see the following: mossy frogs, fire-bellied frogs, three-horned frogs, blue poison dart frogs and red-eyed tree frogs just to name a few.  The Imax Sea Monsters took us on an incredible journey through time allowing us to see how creatures once lived on earth and left behind their stories through recently unearthed remains. 

5^th graders are gearing up for our Robotics competition on Jan 12, 2008.  Missions are being attempted, re-tried and hopefully perfected by January.  The audit team is researching state of the art technology and innovative ways to improve our energy use here at

Mountain View

.  A big thanks to Mr. John Butler for speaking to our students about solar and wind energy sources and the new exciting ways General Electric is exploring alternative means of creating electricity.  Our students were extremely insightful with their questions about these topics.

Our first semester is winding down.  Classes will end the week of Nov. 12 and will resume in January.  The field trip permission form for 5^th grade is coming home today (11-01-07) for the Cumberland Island Trip next spring.  More details to follow!

Super Second Grade

Second Grade is batty for bats. You might be tempted to say that we have bats in the belfry! The students created habitats and began research on a specific bat. All of the presentations were wonderful and the habitats were very creative. Our essential question for this unit is: Why are bats feared if they are so beneficial to our environment? Please discuss this with your student. The kids seem to be enjoying the novel Silverwings. It reinforces several of the concepts that we have learned in class. For example, the bats roost in a colony inside a tree; they use echolocation to hunt, fathers are not allowed in the nursery, and they meet up with the fathers in order to hibernate. We are focusing on vocabulary development as well. We continue to work on logic weekly and I am seeing improvement in logic puzzle solving. The students loved learning a little bit about flight. I was so impressed by the students who knew that in order to fly one would need the following forces weight, thrust, and lift. Through our flying activity we learned that humans stay “airborne” for less then one second, and that the tallest students do not necessarily jump the highest. Ask your student to explain the difference between macro- chiroptera, and micro-chiroptera bats. We really enjoyed our speaker Dr. Stephen Barnett, he had a very informative power point presentation and we saw three bats.

   Fantastic Fifth Grade

Newsflash! Newsflash! Newsflash! Newsflash! Newsflash!

Parent Information Meeting October 11, 2007 on Robotics.

Please attend in order to volunteer. We have two sessions scheduled: 7:45 am-8:45 am  or 6:30 pm-7:30 pm

We are registering for our competition on October 5, 2007 and as soon as we know the exact time and date I will update our blog.  The students are excited about the new computer refresh as we will have two computers per team. This week the students will be introduced to the competition missions and will apply their programming knowledge to successfully complete each mission required for the competition. The students will research alternative energy sources and write and perform a skit for competition. All of the students’ energy will be focused on competition starting this week. Please be aware that the students will need to stay after school in order to perfect the missions and be ready to represent

Mountain View

.

Fabulous Fourth Grade

Our creative intelligence will take us through the mystery of the “

River

of

Venom

” while trying to solve the situation at hand.  What is the conclusion?  Was it a bee sting or perhaps a food allergy, read along and draw a conclusion.  We will learn about allergies, anaphylactic shock, venom and much more as we travel through the rainforest in search of clues!  We will develop a better understanding of this biome instead of developing a fear of the unknown.  As we continue our research through the tropical rainforest we will take a short detour to the Fernbank Museum of Natural History to learn more about some of the amphibians that call this habitat home.  Our construction of the rainforest will soon begin… watch for updated pictures of our progress.