January

Systems: We officially embarked on our journey as environmental detectives!  Students began the new year with a review of systems and a teamwork challenge to prepare themselves for their upcoming experiences. Students were introduced to the Gray Area and the mysterious fish kill that has been taking place there over the last five years.  They met some of the key players (suspects?!?!) in the region, looked at maps of the area to identify factors that may be at play, and studied the history of the area as they compiled a timeline of events and developments over the past 100 years.  Throughout this semester they will be acting as scientists, council members, reporters, and detectives as they conduct tests and research to uncover the reason behind the declining fish population.

Critical and Creative Thinking: This month students enjoyed practicing their critical thinking with Sudoku puzzles.  We also had a lesson on idioms to help us use flexible thinking and solve our plexer picture puzzles.

 

Habits of Mind: Our Habit of Mind focus has been on persisting and strategies to overcome “the dip” when faced with a challenge.  Our favorite activity was reading the book, Grandfather Tang’s Story and using the 7 piece Chinese tangrams to recreate pictures.  Students even used the pieces to create their own original designs!

M^3 (Mentoring Mathematical Minds) Digging for Data:  In math students wrapped up their work on mean, median, mode, and range by completing a review Bingo choice activity where many great products were created!  They also showed their stuff on our check-up assessment.