ELP Mo. Valley

The 5th Grade ELP students are continuing the Missouri Valley Elementary's annual "Giving Tree" project.  Students are collecting items for The Harrison County Food Pantry.  They are asking for non-perishable items such as macaroni-n-cheese, soup, canned vegetables or fruit, pudding, toothbrushes/toothpaste, paper products and peanut butter.  Donated items may be turned in to the Elementary office or Mrs. C.'s Room (209).  Students will be running the service learning project from December 1st-December 20th.  Thank you for the continued support of this school and community endeavor.

The 6th and 7th Grade ELP students have recently wrapped up an independent study in a program called "Genius Hour".  Students selected a topic/idea/theme they had a great deal of interest in or passion for, mapped out a research plan and final project idea, created a final project and then presented their projects to their peers.  We had students with projects ranging from creating rainbow cupcakes to experimenting with "elephant toothpaste and building sugar rockets. Below are pictures and videos from a few of the projects shared with their peers.  The ELP students will plan to create 2 more "Genius Hour" projects over the course of the school year. Ben H. and his "sugar rocket" Shelby D. and her science experiment to create a "bouncy egg" Henley A. replicates a tsunami Chris D. explaining how to create a model hover craft Maya Z. and her experiment for "elephant toothpaste" Emma K. explaining wide

The 4th Grade ELP students are doing their first service learning project:  collecting pop tabs/metal can tabs for The Ronald McDonald House.  The pop tabs are collected, weighed at a collection station and then a money amount is given to the Ronald McDonald House based on the weight of the tabs donated.  So far Missouri Valley Elementary has collected 1,020,500 pop tabs for a total of $25, 500.00 donated.  For more information visit www.rmhc.org.  Pop tabs may be turned in to the MV Elementary office or dropped off in Mrs. C.'s classroom (room 209).  Thank you. By, 4th Grade ELP students

ELP (Extended Learning  Program) for K-7th is up and going....with a few bumps, potholes, swerves and detours along the way......learning to navigate whatever life throws at you, is what I remind the students of when changes come to our class. Below are pictures and/or video clips demonstrating what our students are currently working on.  We are beginning our year by delving into abstract reasoning, visual/spatial learning, potential energy, kinetic energy and chain reactions.  In addition students are continuing with building coding skills and early computer programming processes.  Check out www.code.org and www.playcodemonkey.com for additional ideas. For the Middle School students we are also venturing into an independent study called "Genius Hour" (www.geniushour.com).  Students began with an interest inventory and then developed a driving question to research based off their results.  We are nearing the completion of the 1st set of research and beginning the creation

Mission/Vision/Belief Statements-- -2017 Mission (per web page) : The Missouri Valley Community School District will create an engaging environment that fosters inquisitive learners who can effectively apply their skills in an ever changing world. Mission for ELP: Missouri Valley Community Schools will create qualitatively differentiated instruction in core curricular areas for students who exhibit high performance or potential to achieve in intellectual, creative or artistic areas; or excel in specific academic fields. Students will be considered for the program based on multiple assessment pieces, both standardized and informal,  and services will be reevaluated on a regular basis by parents, classroom teachers, administrators, and the extended learning program instructor. It is the goal of the Missouri Valley ELP (extended learning program), along with all educators, staff and administrators, to foster inquisitive learners, expand their knowledge and str

Over the last couple of weeks the 5th ELP group has departed from basic coding/computer programming skills to focus on sensory robotics with an activity called "Cubelets."  The students collaborated to create small scale sensory robots:  the cubes stack together in certain orders to perform certain tasks as programmed by the color of the cubes.  Below are pictures and/or video of the early trial and error phase of the robot building.  In the next few sessions students will be given challenges to complete with the robots and cubes allotted.  Stay tuned for more pictures, videos and evidence of STEM being applied in all areas of learning..... Standards CC.K-12.MP.5 Use appropriate tools strategically. CC.K-12.MP.6 Attend to precision. CC.K-12.MP.1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. trial and error....take 1..... The very beginning of stacking cubelets... collaborating in a larger group to create a hypothesis for what they thin

In early December Mrs. Jenny Stessman, Instructional Coach, contacted Mrs. Christensen, ELP Instructor, regarding an Iowa Space Grant Consortium.  Teams submitted an application and those 4 teams selected would go to Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL for the Professional Development of a lifetime.....NASA Educational Instructors would create professional development geared toward STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)! On January 3, 2017 the 2 teachers received word they were 1 of the 4 teams from Iowa selected!!! The NASA PD was from February 8-February 11, 2017.  Below are pictures from their experiences: Mrs. Stessman and Mrs. C.  ready to lift-off into learning.... teamwork to develop a model of  a lunar landing module Mars, the next giant leap create a plan, prepare the plan, test the plan, revise as needed:  engineering is always evolving, not just the "right answer" the first testing phase.....yes, Mrs. C. was concentrati