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Spectra: Energetic Escape!

Students enjoyed four activities that explored friction, kinetic and potential energy and how energy is transferred. In each experiment students considered a key question and after setting up an experiment they collected data. The data was graphed and analyzed. In Fiction Fun they considered what affects the force of friction. Here students set up an Read More >>

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Making the World a Better Place

We spent the first half of the year being inspired by people like Ghandi, Wangari, and Malala, and their stories of how they made the world a better place. We listened to their stories. We also invited local activists who saw and responded to a need in our Syracuse Community. We met with inspirational people Read More >>

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Creation Myths

Since January, we began a class with the younger half of the school reading a wide variety of myths from Native American, South American, and African cultures that give voice to stories of how our world and elements of it have been created.  We read many versions of how there came to be Day and Read More >>

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Story Time at DeWitt Library

Our kindergarten students look forward to Tuesdays. That’s the day they walk to the library for story time. They join several other children to listen to stories, and sing and move to songs and verses. One week the librarian brought out the parachute for a new way to sing “The Wheels On the Bus.” There Read More >>

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Crocodile Lyle

This winter, our Kindergarten students explored the fun of Bernard Waber’s lovable crocodile, Lyle. Each Thursday we read a Lyle book and then drew and wrote about one part of the book. Students enjoy predicting what will happen in the story from the pictures, discussing vocabulary and drawing their own pictures for each story.  They Read More >>

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Layers of the Earth

This spring, students in grades 2-4 participated in a unit on the layers of the Earth.  We read The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth, by Joanna & Bruce Cole to gather baseline information about layers within the Earth. We began this unit by creating clay model representations of the different layers found within the Read More >>

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Silly Sentences

Once a week during journal time, the youngest students are part of a class called Silly Sentences. Here they play with puzzle pieces to make sentences that are bound to make them laugh. After making two or three sentences, the children copy and illustrate their sentences in their journals. In the process there is a Read More >>

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Math Centers for Kindergarteners

Over the last few months the Kindergarten students explored counting, coins (pennies, nickels and dimes), measurement using standard units, and adding and subtracting using games and their workbooks. Students compared lengths of object using a ruler. They used a balance where they compared the weight of various objects using non standard and standard units. For Read More >>

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Read-Aloud at Reading Time

Once a week our youngest students gather together for their own read-aloud during the school-wide reading time. Some of them are just beginning to learn to read. Others have developed some reading skills and are just beginning to read independently. They all enjoy listening to a good story together, sharing their thoughts and questions about Read More >>

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Cooking Class

Cooking is a favorite Investigations activity. Students work together to make a food that they share with the whole school. In the process, they see practical applications for math and science. In their read-aloud group, the younger students listened to some of the Little House On the Prairie books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. So, over Read More >>