Our winter break begins tomorrow but before tracking off, we fit in our holiday celebration. Thank you to all the parents who helped put the experiences together. And thank you for bringing in such great food!
Today we visited Betsy Caughlin Donnelly Park to work with the Truckee Meadows Park Foundation and to learn more about arthropods. Students had already done some initial studies on arthropods so the trip focused on finding arthropods and learning more about their local habitats.
The kids were persistent! Despite the challenge of finding the arthropods, the students spent over an hour, lifting rocks, shaking trees, and using aspirators to collect what they could locate.
Apart from the scientific aims, students are also learning more about being citizen scientists and how the general public can help with data collection.
Everyone had glasses and we were able to bask in the shadow of the moon.
Our last field trip for the year was to the Nevada Capitol. We started with a tour of the capitol and quickly moved through 150 years of history including a look at the first Supreme Court, the first legislative chamber and a visit to the museum. This was followed by a tour of the Legislature and a chance to see first-hand the passage of several bills. Moreover, Assemblywoman Jill Tolles was able to visit with the students and share some of her experiences.
We finished our first week working with Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Our initial discussions focused on understanding the historical context in which Shakespeare worked and who Shakespeare was. We unpacked the language of Shakespeare and practiced reading key pieces of dialogue with a focus on iambic pentameter.
This initial work has allowed us to read through the first two scenes in Act I. The students have been doggedly persistent and things have gone as well as we could have hoped.
Today we did our first Pro Se Court. This was the culmination of reading through four different sources on zoos and identifying evidence to support claims about the value of zoos. All of the source material (here) is written at the 7th grade level and this required students to navigate complex text and work with challenging vocabulary.
The term pro se is Latin and means “for oneself” or “on one’s own behalf.” Students became defendants, prosecutors, or justices before creating triads to allow for rich discussions.
Ultimately the justices ruled 6 to 3 in favor of the defendants; that is, zoos were causing greater harm than good.
Today we we used estimations, graphing and calculations to determine how much salt water versus fresh water there is in the world. Based on the student predictions and the results, there was a lot of academic growth!
Today the students in Room360 got to visit the Martin Marietta Spanish Springs Rock Quarry. The team at the quarry was great and allowed students to tour the facility, learn about the work they do, and hear more about the quarry’s role in construction throughout Northern Nevada.
Thank you families for visiting and being part of the Brown Bag Lunch today. It is great to see so many of you, share what is happening in the classroom, and promote the learning your child is engaged in. Linked here is the PowerPoint I shared and here is the link to the Farmer’s Insurance Vote
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Led by NevadaTeach students from the University of Nevada Reno, Room360 explored the differences of building structures in topsoil, sand, and rock. The NevadaTeach students used a lesson from Engineering is Elementary to guide the students through the scientific process and to allow access to the engineering standards within the Nevada Academic Content Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards.
Room 360 