The Monthly Snapshot
A Monthly Newsletter for LES and NPLiberty HS
Off to a great start in kindergarten
By Ms. Raniero
Kindergarten has been busy building a community of readers and writers.
We kicked off the school year by learning about our colors and shapes. Each day, students read literature and completed activities tied to a specific color and/or shape. To wrap up the unit, students listened to an audio story titled “Mix It Up” by Herve Tullet. After learning that mixing primary colors can create other colors, we experimented. Using food coloring and icing, students mixed the following colors and got these results:
Blue + Yellow = Green
Yellow + Red = Orange
Red + Blue = Purple
It sure was a fun, tasty way to learn the science behind our colors! Check out the fun below!
Pictured are Lilly T., Ella M., Garrett W., Kai W., and Rydder B.
Currently, we are learning the English language sounds and the letters that represent those sounds as well as high-frequency words to help us become readers and writers. In math, we are working with numbers 1 through 10 and learning number sense. Having number sense involves understanding the many ways to represent numbers and their relationship to one another. In science, we are wrapping up our study of the five senses.
Looking ahead, we will begin our narrative literature and writing unit. We are off to a great start and look forward to lots of learning and growing this school year!
Is it alive or not?
How can you tell if something is alive? The grade 3 science classes have been observing and researching to find out what being alive really means. We have been asking questions, forming hypotheses, and testing our hypotheses by looking at the characteristics that living things possess.
One of the highlights of our class time included looking at cells from a living thing under a microscope. This helped make the idea of the cell more real for the students. Eventually, we will apply our knowledge of living things to our greenhouse and garden projects.
Below, Pearl W. examines the cells of an onion under a microscope.
What's happening in grade 4?
By Clara G. and Jessica R. (Mrs. Piquero's students)
We are learning about multiples and integers. An integer is a whole number, not a fraction. A multiple is what we get after multiplying the number by an integer. We are also learning about word form, a way of writing a number in words. Expanded form is a way of adding up numbers by place value. Standard form is written in any way accepted. Here are examples for each form:
Word form: five hundred seventy-nine
Expanded form: 500 + 70 + 9 = 579
Standard form: 579
Place value is another thing we are learning. Here are all the place values we are working on: ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousandths, hundred thousandths, and millions.
In reading, we are reading a story about life on the prairie. The story is called “On the Banks of Plum Creek,” which is historical fiction, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It is a story about some hardships that people faced as pioneers. Our focus for this story was conflict and resolution.
An expository nonfiction article we compared with our story, “Surviving on the prairies”, told how people got food, built shelters, and how hard it was to really survive on the prairie. To claim 160 acres of land, pioneers had to dig a well, build a house, and plow at least 20 acres for crops. That’s a lot of work!
We are also working on compound subjects and compound predicates, along with vocabulary and writing, writing, writing!
We are studying the nature of science. We planted avocado seeds a week ago in science as an observation experiment. We also tasted avocado and are going to taste fresh mango soon. We are observing our avocado plants and recording our observations. We are learning about our five senses and how we use them to observe the world around us. We learned about laboratory tools and measurement, experimental design, and making observations and recording data. We are caring for the school garden we started last year in third grade with Mrs. Alexander, who got a grant for our garden house. Some foods we harvested from our garden this fall were basil, tomatoes, potatoes, dill, lettuce, cabbage, zucchinis, cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, peppers, green beans, peas and carrots. We love our garden so much. We had a garden party last year in third grade to celebrate all our hard work. We invited all our families and friends and had food and drinks. This year we had a harvest party in our classroom and tasted all the vegetables we harvested from our garden. They were all yummy!
Below, you will find pictured Clara G. and Jessica R.
Making our mark
By Mr. Boarts
The students at LES have begun another year of creative hands on learning about art!
September 15 marked an annual international event called Dot Day, inspired by Peter Reynolds' book the Dot, the story of a caring teacher who dares a doubting student to trust in her own abilities by being brave enough to “make her mark”. What begins with a small dot on a piece of paper becomes a breakthrough in confidence and courage, igniting a journey of self-discovery and collaboration. Because the message of the Dot is so powerful for students, every grade begins the year with a Dot project.
We are planning to have the 2nd Annual Spring Art Show in conjunction with the band and chorus concerts in May. In an effort to make sure each student can display his or her best artwork from the year, projects will be completed by home on a more irregular basis this year. But as art does make it's way home, I encourage families to talk about what your sons and daughters learned while creating it. I hope you'll find creativity, confidence, and fun were big parts of the learning process.
Below, you will find Dot projects from top-left: 2nd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, 4th grade, 1st grade, and 3rd grade.
Applying rational numbers to real life situations
The students in grade 7 are just completing Unit 1 on the number system. We were focusing on operations with rational numbers. The students were given a project about a summer camp opening and they had to use operations with rational numbers to learn about life at camp. They had to figure out how to cook for all the campers by figuring out the amount of ingredients needed for 66 people versus what the recipe called for with servings of six people. They also needed to check out the average temperatures summer camp would involve. The last part involved activities such as golf and hiking. They focused on how to score golf and figure out the winners and how to develop maps for the trails and how many miles each trail was. The students worked in groups and this was a great way to apply rational numbers to the real world.
Students pictured below include Kurtis W., Margaret W., Michael H., and Hannah A.
Providing voice and choice
By Mrs. Cohick
Mrs. Cohick’s Reading 7 classes are getting lost in books!
Every marking period, students are required to independently read a certain number of books and complete projects in order to demonstrate their knowledge of literary elements.
Every project has a point value, and students are able to choose the projects that interest them as long as they meet the final point requirement.
Project examples include poems, journals, videos, and artwork. These options give students the opportunity to have a say in the classroom, which leads to more meaningful learning.
Pictured below are Hailey W., Nathan M., Sky D., and Quintin K. Freedom to choose their projects puts smiles on their faces.
Amazing quotations in science
By Mr. Ohnmeiss
There are some student quotes that science teachers love to hear.
Recently, upon the initiation of an experiment, I was told that “there has to be a more accurate way of measuring this.” After I pointed out an older-looking, unused piece of equipment and claimed that I didn’t know how to use it, a student added, “Oh, look… the instruction booklet. I’ll figure it out.”
I then observed as this student and another methodically determined how to use a temperature/pH probe on their own.
In the end, I was impressed that these students wanted to take an extremely accurate measurement and were determined to do this despite not knowing how to use the probe. Their determination helped them to solve the problems in the situation.
Students pictured using the probe below are Brie E. and Riley W.