Reduce, REUSE, Recycle:

Earth Day is a day of celebrating our beautiful planet and teaching others about how we can KEEP it clean. Our REUSE project showed others that a fun and creative craft can be made with old magazine pages. And the more paper we humans use, the more trees we have to cut down. And the more trees we cut down, the more animal homes we destroy.

~Old magazine pages become new photo frames ~

Testing Week is a stress free, snack eating, science fun kinda week here at St. James! Each afternoon, we strive to create fun hands-on activities for our students that work extra hard during the morning tests! This year we participated in the Middle School’s Science Team, "Trajeggtory Engineering Challenge”, egg throwing with a ‘lil physics!

Each team was given 15 minutes to use their own building materials to construct a device capable of protecting an egg. A student from the team THREW their constructed device OVER the top of the volleyball net. The device that went the FARTHEST distance WITHOUT BREAKING was declared the winner.

Wow! And just like that, we welcome the month of April! These past 2 weeks have been loaded with fun!

Our Spring Musical production of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory was a huge success last Friday evening! 3rd grade played the part of Candy-Man-Kids and did a phenomenal job! (I think we teachers have sung the familiar childhood songs since LAST year hehe) But Covid did not stop us THIS year! Thank you, Mrs. Tipton for another amazing musical!

This week in 3rd grade, we studied contractions, analyzing data, the history & geography of Badlands National Park, as well as, Holy Week. We used our creative bones and knowledge each day to paint a scene of an event that lead to Jesus’s resurrection on a stone. This afternoon we shared our Easter Story Stones with Kindergarten students.
Luke 24:6-7: "He is not here; he has risen!"

Luke 24:6-7: "He is not here; he has risen!"

“Silly rabbits, Easter is for Jesus”…..Yes, indeed, but I couldn’t help adding these adorable art pieces from this weeks lesson with Mrs. McCarley!! 🐰

We have finished our chapter book study, Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. After we read the last sentence together, everyone was smiling and I heard, “This is the best book ever!” Teacher win!! I mean, who doesn’t love Pippi?!

Most reading was whole group, but I did assign small parts each night to read at home. We discussed many general strategies for reading comprehension including: previewing, predicting, questioning, visualizing & making inferences.

To celebrate, we enjoyed eatable(chocolate) gold coins and role played as pirates! 🏴‍☠️

A biography project isn’t just about celebrating the life and achievement of a notable person. This type of writing experience can be rooted in instructional goals. This includes goals related to informational reading and writing in response to research. This specific type of project supports research, writing and speaking skills.

Students followed a checklist that outlined the steps to completing the project….

-chose a person that interested them

-Find a bio or autobiography about the person (2 sources were required)

-read sources and take notes

-type final copy of report that follows a rubric

-present the report along with a Tri-fold presentation board that follows a rubric

This year, I was in awe of their biography choices! Each student expressed their personality through creative presentations.
Click below to view the presentations! 😬

https://youtu.be/2ZkoTfUl6D8
https://youtu.be/Qlw7Momm60I