Spring Fever!

    This has been another crazy week.  Spring we think is trying to hit.  The kids are a definitely ready for nice weather and so are we!  Our new project is on it's first stage and the students are working on finding out what makes someone a "champion" or makes someone "great".  It has been neat to see who they have chosen as their "champions".  We have had some chose their parents, business people, teachers not just athletes or famous people.  They will be giving short speeches before spring break about their chosen champions to satisfy the individual oral presentation part of our report card.  Once they have finished this first part they will get to chose the college they will be learning about for our college fair after spring break. 
     This week we had the opportunity to meet with other PBL facilitators from across Northern Indiana at Plymouth High School.  We were able to share ideas and get new ideas for our PBL learning teams.  We had two of our students participate in a panel discussion.  There were three Riverside and three Lincoln students who answered questions from facilitators.  Our two did a fabulous job articulating what they know and like about PBL. 

   

     We have had a few of our students post on the school's 180 Days of Learning Blog in the past few weeks and those links have been shared.  This week another of our students posted about Twitter.  It is neat to see our students branching out and learning from all sorts of people.  Here is the link to the latest post.  If you have not seen the other student posts just scroll through.  There are a lot of great posts about things going on in our schools!

http://pcsc180daysoflearning.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/5th-grade-student-joins-twitter-chat/


     We have started something different in math this week.  We have been having short classes on and off during the year due to PBL and this week students started coming to math twice.  Once in their "class" and once in a small group.  Some groups have been coming twice for a long time for either interventions or for the Digits group.  The rest of the class has been coming to their class and then when needed.  We have been trying to be flexible with our schedule and are trying this out.  Students come to their small group during PBL work time for about 30 mins.  They are doing stations and one is working with Mrs. Dennie on problems.  We have been discussing how to read the problems and find out what we need to do to solve them.  Most of the problems have many ways to find the solution and we have been discussing these together.  This has been working out very nicely and we are seeing more confidence in their math skills each day.   
    In science this week the students have been working on the human body and did a fun experiment where they taped up their fingers and had to try and go about their day without being able to bend certain joints.  Ask your child about this.  They had a good time and had some "ah ha" moments. 
    In language arts students have been working on their individual learning path.  They filled out goal sheets and started to learn about a wide variety of items.  They have really enjoyed this and are working hard. 
    In math this week we have been working on writing our own geometry stories using Story Jumper a really cool online program.  Ask your child to show you their online book. 
     One week until AR goals need to be met!   Some are working very hard at this.  Please encourage them to get this done.  Also, encourage them to read over spring break to get a jump start on the next goal!  The last nine weeks goes very quickly!
     Have a great weekend.