Character Pumpkins allowed students to focus on one of the two following skills: using text-based evidence and writing a summary. With text-based evidence, students learned to search for evidence and use it to support their claim. This meant students needed to have their books open and cite page and paragraph to support their position.

The summary writing required a different approach of "less is more." Students were challenged to write a summary for chapters in one sentence. This type of summarizing forced students to focus in on the "very important parts." Using a previously taught skill like the 5 Finger Retell provides a summary while helping us to refrain from reporting about every single detail in a chapter.

Each of these skills will assist students as they begin conducting research later in the year using more complex text. These provide tools for each students' toolbox to analyze and share information from what they read.

Work is continuing at Boyce on the JASON Project Video or Poster Contest. Their challenge is to create a video or poster that imagines what recycling will look like in 50, 75, or even 100 years from now by designing a solution to a current problem in recycling today. The Boyce Team identified through research that it is people's attitude towards recycling hindering the recycling effort. Through research the team saw the attitude of "somebody else will take care of it" as the biggest obstacle to recycling. Students felt by educating and creating a solution for their own school would be one step toward decreasing human impact on the environment. Therefore, the recycling nudge was pulled out of the closet and using the engineering design process the students began to make improvement based on the experiences from last year. Coming up will be creating a storyboard and then shooting videos to piece together though WeVideo.

Our journey began as the students were presented with a stone with unusual markings. Students uncovered the mysteries found on this stone by applying and extending their new knowledge of place value. Later, they learned about the Egyptian numeration system exploring how symbols are used in a positional systems and why we need a symbol for representing none of a particular place value (i.e., zero). As students learned the Chinese numeration system, and gained a deeper understanding of expanded notation, it was an excellent time to embrace the ethnic differences found in both the Chinese and Egyptian cultures. Their work on the investigations lead them to the knowledge they need to unravel the mystery of the stone.