Boo Bash was a huge success for our school. I really think that the students embraced our change in activities this year from traditional "scary" theme to the Wizard of Oz theme in honor of the 75th anniversary. One reason that I had delayed in posting was I have been waiting on a copy of a picture of a project that my students made for Boo Bash. I am very proud of their work. It was quite the undertaking, however they managed to pull of a creation of tremendous proportions.
My students took an 8x11 photo from the internet of a scene from the Wizard of Oz and transformed it into a 10ftX9ft masterpiece to cover the double doors on the hallway. The piece was gorgeous. The grand thing about the design was...there was no design; it was all free hand. There were about forty different students that worked on the piece, they used construction paper, colored computer paper, and there were a few drawings added in. In the end it looked like a huge patchwork quilt. It was amazing!!
The only thing that we decided we would have changed in the end was the size of the yellow brick road, we felt it was not an exact scale considering the size of the final portrait. But, all considering I think it was pretty awesome.
Last week we dove head first into writing. We had two pieces that were very important to us. The first was for fun (or so they thought). Our first piece entitled, How to Carve a Pumpkin worked well to prove to students the importance of including details in our writing. When I first gave the assignment on Monday, some laughed and commented they could have that finished in two or three sentences. I politely smiled and said, "Really I am on my third paragraph and I have not even got to the cutting part yet." After removing the look of shock and surprise from their faces a student chimes in, "But Mrs. Bradshaw you put way more detail in your writing I am sure." to which I replied, "Bingo! I am glad you figured it out." Needless to say it did not take long for us to realize that carving a pumpkin is a very detailed process.