2017-2018 "Year in Review"

A few highlights from our ELP (extended learning program) groups, as created by the students:

  1. 4th Grade ELP Service Learning Project for The Ronald McDonald House
    1. collecting an 113, 250 pop/soup tabs 
    2. A grand total of 1, 134,000 pop tabs have been donated by the Missouri Valley Little Reds!
  2. 5th Grade ELP Service Learning Project for The Giving Tree Project
    1. students called the Harrison County Food Pantry to ask for the most needed items
    2. students created morning school-wide announcements about collecting items for the food pantry
    3. students created posters and brochures to inform students about what to bring, when to bring items and our goal for items collected.
  3. K-1st ELP added pre-computer programming skills to our weekly small group time.
    1. www.code.org
    2. kodables 
    3. Hour of Code
  4. 2nd Grade ELP groups developed early robotic skills using OSMO, bee-bots and pro-bots
  5. 3rd Grade ELP added a course 3 to their studio.code section 
    1. vertical stacking of code
    2. understanding of angles (obtuse, acute, right angle) to create more complex puzzles and lines of code.
  6. Middle School ELP groups focused on Language Arts/Literacy
    1. comparing/contrasting various forms of text and media
    2. reading a wide variety of genres
    3. connecting text to social issues and/or character education traits
    4. creating virtual or traditional scrapbooks based off of biographies read
    5. participated in Southwest Iowa Middle School Battle of the Books (SWIMBOB)
    6. particpated in The Thinking Cap Quiz Bowl  (online)
    7. adding Genius Hour to our class time (www.geniushour.com)
      1. model of a trebuchet
      2. original reader's theater about the Salem Witch Trials if it had happened in a Quaker community vs. a Puritan community (tied to novel "A Day No Pigs Would Die")
      3. creating an original coded storyboard about how to have a formal conversation (created to look like a virtual game of "catch"---a question is thrown to you, you throw back a response and a question.)
      4. Science experiments to crystallize egg shells, create "bouncy eggs" and how to make an egg shell see-through.
It was an exciting, exhilarating and educational year.  I look forward to what a  new school year will bring to our ELP groups.  Have a wonderful summer vacation.

Yours in Education,
Mrs. C.

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