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Unit 2: How the World Works

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  Unit 2: How the World Works Central Idea: People use their understanding of natural laws to manipulate objects.  We have had quite a busy first term! During this unit we learned about forces and simple machines! We talked about push and pull, and how machines help up use less force to move an object. In the pictures below we were miming push and pull and our friends had to guess which one we were showing! Can you tell if we are showing push or pull? When learning about simple machines we learned about incline planes. Students designed their own marble mazes out of Legos. Students used their knowledge of incline planes and forces to guide their marble through the maze.  In Japanese students made their own recycles cars and connected it to our learning about wheels and axels! Students worked in teams to create their own Rube Goldberg machines to complete a task. A Rube Goldberg Machine is a complicated machine used to complete a simple task. We were very ambitious with our machines and

Unit 1: Who We Are

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   Unit 1: Who We Are Central Idea: The choices we make affect our health and wellbeing. To start of the term we talked about our classroom rules and the things that we thought we important in the classroom. Students were challenged to work in groups and make models of the classroom rule that they thought was the most important. That had to think critically and creatively to use a variety of materials and see their masterpieces come to life! This unit we were talking about health and wellbeing! Students learned about exercise, meditation, healthy eating, and how to get a good nights sleep. We kept journals of exercise and tracked our good sleeping habits.  Students took action is a variety of ways as well. We thought about the habits in our own lives that are healthy and unhealthy and thought of ways to change our habits. Students chose 1 Habit to add to their weekly routine and made a poster to help them remember to make a change for their health and well-being! In math, we have been

Unit 6: How We Organize Ourselves

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     How We Organize Ourselves Central Idea People Establish Systems and Organizations to meet the needs of a community Lines of Inquiry The purpose of systems and organizations. How organizations work together within a community Volunteering and community service During this unit we came together as a clas sroom comunity and did a lot of preparing and practicing for YEP. Studnts were able to use the skills they learned in team work and conflict management to work with their teams to write and coreograph their own performances and then work to practice and prepare for YEP! I am very proud of all of the work that they put it!  This unit we learned about the needs of different communities and how buisnesses and organizations are built to meet those needs. We planned out our own "perfect communities" and then worked together to build one to share. Things that we included in our community: food markets, parks, stadiums, hospitals for both animals and people, police and fire stati

Unit 5: How We Express Ourselves

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 How We Express Ourselves  Central Idea: Stories and storytelling help us to learn about different cultures.  Lines of Inquiry:  Perspective: Different ways regions tell stories. Change: How stories change throughout time. Causation: The reasons people tell stories. During this unit we focused on the history of storytelling and how different cultures told stories. We learned about shadow puppets, and cave drawing. Telling stories around a fire, and even how to tell digital stories.  We practiced written story telling and writing personal narratives. Our favorite writing activity was writing a fictional story pretending we were stuck in a snow globe. We made sure to include lots of details and adjectives to describe  the setting and how we were feeling. We even really had snow during this unit, so it was almost like REALLY being in a snow globe!   We practiced different ways of oral storytelling as well. We wrote our own scripts and practicing acting in front of the class. Using a big v