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| Thanks McCallum HS students & UT's Marlo! |
It was all things Science Fair this week, with the cafeteria and halls full of 290 tri-fold boards highlighting experiments and research on everything from vortex rings to product testing of window cleaners to an explanation on The Myth of Vampire Leaks. Adults in attendance at our first ever Family Science Night, including co-chairs Juli Berwald and Tina Barrett, along with fifth grade science teacher Janet Matetich, agree with me that this year's crop of projects truly are the best yet. I was thrilled to see that many project ideas came from some type of personal experience - this seemed to make those projects that much better as students had a personal reason to research. Such as Sarah's project on infant jaundice and bilirubin (baby brother Liam had it as a newborn!) and Trevor's research on retinal detachment - something he experienced this summer. In addition to today's oral interviews with a few McCallum HS advanced science students plus one UT student, our Thursday Family Science Night gave each fifth grader a chance to explain their project to adult attendees. This extra component gave much meaning to the projects for our students and we are hoping to open the evening up to all K-5 entrants next year. The students were very eager to share rationales, the hypotheses, the workings and findings of the experiments or research, as well as their conclusions. They were also able to reflect and explain what they would do differently next time and (perhaps most importantly) any possible next steps in their research. Cool. Many budding scientists among us and I couldn't be prouder of the work done. 
Loved the DBI strategies I saw in use when I visited Mrs. Bachman's language arts class. Students were working on reading fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary and used Tableaux to help with their understanding of words such as weeping and miserable (from the novel they were reading, My Father's Dragon). What was really cool though was seeing Moses in action, toward the end of the lesson, test out the DBI strategy Hot Seat. He was a very convincing cat from the story and answered audience questions about his motivation, feelings, and more quite ably. Building comprehension in meaningful, authentic, and motivating ways. Can't wait to see more!
Kudos to Mrs. O'Donnell and her fifth grade math students for a truly engaging Van de Walle lesson on equivalent fractions. The paired activity, with the use of counters, allowed students to create fractional parts in arrays, then further writing an equation showing the equivalent fraction. They got it, they were discussing it together (socializing intelligence!), and they were able to explain their thinking to me.
Finally, some other cool images from the week involve the third grade annual Medieval Unit. Posted in our third grade hallways, and in anticipation of the upcoming Medieval Fair performances, we have student created shields and movie posters connected to the novel The Castle In the Attic. Much more coming including a re-formatted performance in a couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to it, but in the meantime, check out some of the student work below.
