This week we began our investigation into motion and matter. During the launch we explored two forces, magnetism and gravity, with a specific emphasis on the terms attract and repel. Among the investigations was understanding how a magnetic field works. Students manipulated this phenomena with studies around magnets and paperclips. In the coming days, we…
Author: Aaron Grossman
I am a 5th grade teacher at Roy Gomm Elementary in Reno, Nevada. I started working with elementary students as part of the Montana Reads program and AmeriCorps. In 2001, after graduating from the University of Montana and moving to Reno, Nevada, I student taught at Rita Cannan Elementary before receiving a 6th grade position at Veterans Elementary. I moved out of the classroom to be a Literacy Coordinator, then an Instructional Coach, and finally a School Improvement Program Coordinator. In 2011, I began working on the Nevada Academic Content Standards in the district’s Curriculum & Instruction Department. I returned to the classroom for the 2015-2016 school year to teach 4th grade at Huffaker Elementary.
Before returning to the classroom, I helped develop the Core Task Project that has been featured by National Public Radio, the Gates Foundation, American Radio Works, Eduwonk, the Fordham Institute, Vox, and the Center for American Progress. In 2014, I received the Leader to Learn From Award for my teacher-centered initiative and work to bring college, career, and civics ready outcomes into Northern Nevada classrooms (here).
In 2015, I was appointed by Governor Sandoval serve on the Statewide RPDP Council. The same year, Nevada’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction Steve Canavero placed me on the state’s State Improvement Team. This year I will be part of the National Council on Teacher Quality’s Teacher Advisory Group. I am Google Certified Educator and a Nevada Teacher Ambassador.
I believe strongly that teaching content is teaching reading and I make sure my students have ample opportunities to work with social studies, history, science and art outcomes. I do what I can to blend the learning for my students and this blog is part of that effort. You can contact me at coretaskproject@gmail.com
Valentines 2020
Our last official classroom celebration for the 2019-2020 had students making Valentines boxes before sharing cards and gifts. Love all the variation, although the outcome/goal was the same for all.
Totem Animals
For this art lessons, the students completed a series of careful observations of art made by indigenous cultures. They learned that Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest believed an animal could represent a person. In turn, they reviewed images of different animals before selecting one, created multiple quick sketches, painted a full representation, and added…
Goals 2020
Check out the goals the students set for themselves in 2020.
Holiday Gift Exchange 2019
Students brought in favorite wrapped board games for our holiday gift exchange. There were two twists. The first was that we incorporated the White Elephant idea in which games could be “stolen.” The second was that at the end of the exchange, students taught each other how to play the game they had shared for…
3 Great Days of Productive Learning
At the beginning of the week, I reminded the students that we would maximize our instructional time until our Holiday Celebration on Wednesday, at 2:30. That is exactly what they did. We covered a lot with explorations of unit fractions, adaptations, work on syntax, and fluency practice via Readers Theater. We gamified content with Quizizz…
Holiday Celebration, 2019
Thank you parents for all of your help in creating a really nice Holiday Celebration for the kids. Things ran really smoothly and it great that the kids will have two terrific keepsakes going forward.
Computer Science Activities
Today we did a little more work with the computer science standards. We used Makey Makeys to help us get ready for Scratch coding. We used Spheros to help reinforce our understanding of block coding. The Nevada Computer Science standards are relatively new as is having all students take at least a 1/2 credit of…
Enchanted Lands
We completed our Enchanted Lands project this week and the final pieces are terrific. We first explored the idea of background, midground, and foreground through classic pieces of art. Then we played a game in which students drew images matched to magical elements, they identified. Their understanding was then leveraged to create art that included…
Data Analysis with Halloween Candy
Students shared five pieces of candy, from their Halloween trick-or-treating, and created scaled bar graphs with it. In this case students identified categories for their x-axis and an interval of 2 to 5 for their y-axis. Lots of learning and lots of fun.
