Projects - Welcome to Miss Ferrara's Class

Landform Webquest Posters

Students paired up into teams of three or four 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.

Remarkable Readers

Listen to your child read! In this reading portfolio, the students will be able to periodically read part of a story on this page throughout the school year. The goal of this page is to document student growth from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. Listen for student fluency (the ability to read phrases and sentences smoothly and quickly, while understanding them as expressions of complete ideas, from About.com) and expression (the feeling expressed as one reads).

Monster Exchange

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!

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 to see pictures of students with their projects and read why their building is important to the community.

Journey North Tulip Garden Project

In Journey North, students plant and observe tulip gardens to track the arrival of spring. They observe and record when their own plants – and those in other school gardens in North America – emerge from the ground and bloom. As students track this one plant type, along with temperatures, day length, and other seasonal signs, they discover how different factors influence the wave of spring. This sets the stage for better understanding our changing climate.

Click on the flower to see pictures of our bloomed tulips!

Flat Stanley

Our class read a story called Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. In this story, Stanley is flattened by a bulletin board. He is sent in a giant envelope to visit his friend in California. So, our class sent flat versions of themselves to visit friends/relatives around the country and world. This is a great way for our class to learn geography and more about our country. Click on Flat Stanley to see a map of our flat travelers who have returned from vacation. If you click on the pinpoint, you will see some interesting facts we learned about each state.

State of Connecticut 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!