Moving Over the Old - Fairy Tales on Trial

Fairy Tales on Trial

1/4/12  We spend a HUGE chunk of time on our suspect list because it is the underlying works for everything else in the whole trial.  WE.  ARE.  ALMOST.  DONE!!!!  Thankfully, your kids are all great workers and totally into the process!  I had a few begging to work on the pairing down the suspects during times outside of study group!  That always makes a teacher happy!


11/16/11  Cha-cha-cha-check it out!  A picture of your kids hard at work!  I was going for candid, but a few caught on.

 This week my fourth graders had a writing benchmark during study group time, so being the flexible group we are, we switched things around.  During Language Arts Acceleration we did our warm-up, read some of  Pinocchio, and then continued working on our suspect sheets!  These suspect sheets are the springboard for our whole trial.  We will spend a good amount of time and some imagination making each one awesome.  The kids will be putting in a ton of work, but the trial is sure to be amazing!



11/9/11  Ah - the plague of the pictures (or lack thereof) has taken over!  That being said, we had a fabulous study group today.  We read more of Pinocchio and then finished our "Coaster Caper."  Would you believe that Benny Berleine was guilty?  Shocking, I know!  Let me tell you though, that was not nearly the most exciting thing that happened today!  The fun really started when we begin compiling our own suspect list!  That's right ladies and gentlemen, we are starting to look at who might be innocent and, more importantly, who might be guilty in the good ol' tale of Pinocchio!  Stay tuned.  I will share some details, but others will be kept secret to make the trial that much more exciting!


11/2/11  I really missed this group today.  The Challenge Lab was closed.  I'm always sad to miss a group!  However, at least I did not fail on my "promise" to take pictures.  Let's see how it goes next time!


10/26/11  Do I dare promise to take pictures next week?  Hopefully, I'll get my act together so you can see the kids in action!

Today we read more of Pinocchio.  They are soaking it up and completely captivated.  Take a moment and ask your kiddo all about Pinocchio's block head.  We have a long ways to go still, but we're making progress in the book.

Afterwards, we began "The Coaster Caper" from One Hour Mysteries.  Everyone was having a blast, but we ran out of time.  Next week we will discover who sabotaged The Serpentine Roller Coaster; and along the way we will be learning all about suspect lists, alibis, substantiating alibis and evidence.
  

10/19/11  I have this "horrible" habit of getting so into the lesson that I forget to take any pictures!  Deep, deep down I know pictures make this whole blog more interesting!  Anyways, on with the update...

Our lesson began with a discussion on the history of Pinocchio followed by the fact that outside of the Disney's "Pinocchio" there is really only one other version - the REAL one!  We made a group decision to read Pinocchio, and read it we did!  We spent the rest of the class reading Pinocchio and every other minute these guys and gals were in the lab.  In fact, the group voted to read Pinocchio during lunch bunch for awhile!

I love, love, love seeing how into the book they are!  The REAL Pinocchio differs greatly from what Mr. Disney introduced in the 1940s.  Some parts are shocking, some sad, some the same, and a bunch are just out there!  Stay tuned because this is sure to enhance our fairy tale on trial!!! 

10/12/11  Mrs. Stern made the mistake of walking into our room during a heated debate.  She was mesmerized and stuck around for a few more minutes!  The debate?  Which fairy tale would be better to put on trial - Pinocchio or Hansel and Gretel!  These guys and gals were into it!  The hardest part was taking turns!  Everyone had wonderful, amazing, fantastic things to say!  (Oh yeah, and for the soft spoken ones their was a quick lesson on growling and telling others, "Sit down!  It's my turn!"  Ask your kids all about it!  Just please remember, 99.9% of the time the Challenge Lab is a super nice place!)

Now, what fairy tale will we be putting on trial?  Let me check with the kids next week and see if they mind me sharing!  Otherwise, we will keep it a super secret!


10/5/11  Things are getting serious in here!  Each student has a fairy tale they are now representing!  This is the start of choosing one fairy tale to go on trial!  The kids spent their time picking suspects and pinning them with possible crimes!  Next week, they will represent their fairy tale and convince others why it MUST go on trial!  If I don't get too wrapped up in everything, I will try to get a short video of this!

9/28/11  Our warm-up was to rewrite "Little Red Riding Hood" using the five sense and little known details!  Everyone was so into it, that they kept going and going and going!  Here they are reading their stories to the class!

9/21/11  Multiple perspectives is the name of the game right now!  And let me tell you, it is amazing when two groups read the EXACT SAME story from two different perspectives!  What's important might be the same but for entirely different reasons!  Both groups read a boring ol' story about a house!  I'm sure they were wondering why I was torturing them so!  Afterwards they received a card and reread the story as either a real estate agent or a robber.  So many of the same facts seemed important to both sides!

Catching the rowdy robbers at the scene of the crime!

Super professional realtors!  Well, all but one who was caught sleeping on the job!

9/14/11  We are doing quite a few creativity and perspective activities to build the type of "think tanks" these little lawyers need in order to put a fairy tale on trial!  Enjoy Audrey's Little Red Riding Hood story from the view of a dust bunny under Granny's bed!

9/7/11  There is no shortage of creativity in this bunch!  Zip, zero, nada!  That being said, after exploring The True Story of the Three Little Pigs as told to Jon Scieszka last week, we took the good ol' fashion "Three Little Pigs" and told it, retold it, twisted it around and turned it inside out!  Next, we looked at the pig who built his house from straw, the pig who built his house from sticks, the big bad wolf and who is the smartest!  After some funny discussions and moving from table to table, the pig who built his house from straw received the winning vote!  Why, you ask?  Apparently, if you live in a place where there is any possibility of a wolf blowing your house down, you should build it out of a light material that will not injure you yet will make a great cloud of dust when it falls!  This assists in your escape!  Makes perfect sense to me!

8/31/11  This week we got things off to a fabulous start by looking at life through multiple perspectives.  Let me tell you, this group had me laughing quite a bit!  They were to take on the roll of elderly people in a nursing home learning about technology.  And boy did they!  When they returned to the lab later in the day for lunch bunch these crazy kids were still at it!  Enjoy the clip!  (I'm working on the clip! And learning more about technology too!  Whew!  I hope to get it up soon!)