The students of Devonshire check-in on the bears of Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska! The bears are photographed and webcams document which bears get the biggest in preparation for hibernation. This years' winner is a brown bear named Chunk. The display in the library was complete with live bear webcams and plenty of books about bears!

Fifth graders have used the design thinking process to create a design out of limited materials that they think would do the best job of protecting an egg from an approximate drop of 12ft. They were given time to ASK, IMAGINE, PLAN, CREATE , IMPROVE, and PRESENT/TEST their design. The materials provided were: 2 paper towels tubes, 4 straws, 4 craft sticks, two cups, 12"x12" bubble wrap, two coffee filters, 12" of string, and 24" of tape. THEN they needed to choose one more item to add to their materials: plastic bag, 6 cotton balls, OR a sponge. 

We've read a lot of award winning books this year and now we're having them face off in a March Madness style bracket! Each week, first through third graders cast their votes to narrow it down to one winner! Can't wait to see who comes out on top!

Fourth graders began using a stop motion app called KomaKoma. They are practicing today, creating next week, and then sharing out with the class if they choose. I'm looking forward to what wonderful creations we'll see!

Our kindergarten classes started coding with BeeBots last week. These little robots start the beginning stages of coding, understanding sequencing, directionality, and problem solving. 

Fifth grader teaches his classmates about Scratch Coding!

We've been practicing getting information from pictures. We've read several non-fiction books and were able to get facts from the pictures in those books. This week, we are reading pictures of fiction books. We read the wordless book Stormy as a class. The teacher modeled how to use the pictures to tell a story and then the students took their turn reading to a puppet. They did a great job! 

Fifth graders are doing some coding prep this week using Turing Tumbles to problem solve. Each challenge gives an objective, an output, and each set of partners needs to use the proper pieces to reach the objective. It's definitely a challenge and will only get increasingly difficult but I know they are up to the task!