Celebrating Pi Day

 We celebrated Pi Day by creating bracelets with beads representing each digit of pi (and a small, black bead to represent the decimal point.) 

We worked with our 5th and 6th grade buddy class during this project because they are truly experts on pi and were able to teach us a lot! We had a class discussion about this magical number and talked about that it is a transcendental number and also an irrational number. 

After creating a Pi Bracelet, pairs of buddies worked together using the Tellegami app to create a video about pi. 

Last but certainly not least, we measured the circumference of several pies, sang happy birthday to pi and enjoyed a delicious slice of pie! 

Dr. Seuss Doors

The culminating activity to our week of Dr. Seuss celebrations was touring the school and admiring all the Seusstastical doors!

Students guessed what book each door was representing and logged it. We compared doors of the books expressing the same title and even scanned a few Seuss QR Codes.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss! We enjoyed celebrating you! 

Reading Across America (Literally!)

In honor of "Read Across America" week and Dr. Seuss' birthday, my class read across America, doing a reader's theater with our pen-pal class in Massachusetts. We performed Green Eggs and Ham through a video-conference. My class had the role of "Friend" while our pen-pal class portrayed "Sam-I-Am."

This was a very unique 21st century learning experience and the students enjoyed seeing and chatting with their pen-pals for a few minutes after the reader's theater. A brief clip can be viewed here.  We really enjoyed reading across America!

Celebrating the Birthday of Dr. Seuss

Today we celebrated what would have been the 110th birthday of Dr. Seuss!

We welcomed celebrity reader Robin Nash from trending radio hot 97.5 and 103.9 to read aloud to us. 

After the book, she took some time to do some Q&A with us answering questions ranging from how to become a radio deejay to what her favorite Dr. Seuss books are. This celebrity reader was a fun way to kick-off a week long of Seussical activities to celebrate reading!

Grand Canyon Essay Contest Winners

Gold Medal Winner!

Earlier this year every student wrote an essay for The Grand Canyon Essay Contest. This is the largest essay contest in the United States and this year they received over 7,000 entries from students in public, private, parochial and home schools throughout Arizona. Congratulations to our very own Liam for winning 1st place in his grade level and earning a gold medal! Below is the video clip of Dr. Davis presenting him with his well earned prize!

QR Code Scavenger Hunt

We learned about all of Arizona's "Five C's" as we prepared for the 102nd birthday of our great state!

To learn about cotton, students participated in a QR Code Scavenger Hunt. Working with a partner, they found clues all over the room and scanned them with an iPad.

The information they scanned came in a variety of formats including video messages, audio messages, slide shows, documents, websites and plain text. 

Students took notes during the scavenger hunt and decided which information was the most interesting and relevant. Then, they created a cotton collage, displaying some of the new facts they had learned.

Mustang Spirit!

We showed the MOST spirit of any class in the entire school last month, so we have the privilege of hosting the Mustang Spirit Banner in our classroom!

Congratulations!