Show and Tell Recap

Our Show & Tell has been a hit in our REACH classes! We are pleased to see so many of our students sharing about themselves and have learned tons about favorite hobbies, special gifts received to hidden talents we did not know about our rocketeers. We even learned about cultural backgrounds and new languages! Our rocketeers have much to share and have been taking  the time to prepare these special presentations. Have a look at a recap of what we have learned this fall!




We are also excited to have our first guest speaker, Mrs. Deborah Gurt! Mrs. Gurt brought with her a Museum in a Trunk containing various artifacts of Jewish life and customs. In her presentation, we learned about immigration history and the importance of primary documents in recapturing the times and experiences from long ago. Have a look at some clips from her talk below.



If you are interested in participating in Show & Tell, have a look at our guidelines by clicking here.

Six Hats Thinking, A New Way of Thinking

The past two weeks our 2nd-4th graders have been putting on their thinking hats. We have heard our teachers tell us to do this, but what does that really mean? We discovered Edward DeBono's Thinking Hats to show us to view situations and solve problems from different points of views. Each hat is a different color, which represents a different way of viewing a situation or dilemma. The first question we explored was, "What if our parents/families decided to move to Australia?" We put on different hats and presented our findings to our classmates. Some of us even created our own mini hats to review our hats. Our next step was to use our Six Hats Thinking to explore literature. After reading the story, A Pocket for Corduroy, we then used our hats to help out the main character. Our next goal is to use our Six Hats Thinking with our novel study units. Stay tuned for more!

Here are some hats we made. 

With the black hat we list all the bad points or difficulties. 

With the white hat we list all the questions or information we need. 

Show & Tell with Cole

Today one of our rocketeers shared a hobby of his during Show and Tell. Even though Cole has had his guitar for about a year now, he just started taking lessons.  He wanted to show off his skills as well as love for music and we are glad he did! Have a look at some clips of his presentation below.


We are glad that Cole took the time and preparation to share something that means so much to him. Every week, we encourage our rocketeers to bring something from home so that we can learn more about them, showcase their interests and talents as well as celebrate what makes them so unique.

Yellow Watermelon

This week, our 4th graders were in for a treat. . . yellow watermelon! While some of us have heard of yellow watermelon, others have not had the opportunity to taste it. What made this extra special is that this came from Ms. Carter's father's watermelon patch. As you can see, we really enjoyed it. Have you ever tried yellow watermelon? What different kinds of fruits are grown in your state or region?

Silly Dots!: Using colAR to Celebrate Dot Day

In preparation for Dot Day, our rocketeers read the story, The Dot, by Peter Reynolds as well as designed dots to symbolize what creativity means. As a culminating activity, we also thought it would be fun to bring our dots to life by using the free app, colAR. With this app, you can turn pre-loaded coloring pages into 3D! This technique is called Augmented Reality, because although we can see the three dimensional object with our device, it actually isn't there in real life! Another nifty feature of this app is that you can take pictures of your creation as you are viewing it in 3D. As we played around with making our dots larger and watching our own dot galaxies orbit each other, we took our activity a step further. Our result: Silly Dot Pictures! As you can see, we had to position ourselves next to our imaginary dots and pretend we were holding them, looking at them, even tried to take a bite out of them! Let's just say we definitely put our creativity to action today. Have a look at some of our snapshots below.

Instructions: To download the colAR app on an Android device, go to the Google Play store or click here. To download the app on an iPhone or iPad, visit the iTunes store by clicking here. Remember, you will need to download and color the sheets included on the app before you can turn your picture into 3D. Have fun!

Acknowledgements: We would like to give a special thanks to Ms. Shannon Miller at the Van Meter School in Iowa for sharing this very cool app on Twitter. To check out how her students used this app for #DotDay click here.