Today we are so lucky to have been visited by Chandler Clark and Sara Berryhill to tell us about the Water is Basic program.  They talked about how this program drills wells in Africa to provide clean water to the people that live there.  They were able to visit a village in the South Sudan and see what a difference fresh water makes for the lives of the people in the village.  They helped us understand how important water is in our lives and how important it is to conserve our fresh water supply.  They are doing a Walk for Water on March 22nd.  See the previous post if you are interested in participating in the Walk for this wonderful cause.

The Cub Choir and Tocar will perform their concert, "Sun, Moon, and Stars," next Thursday, March 6th at 5:30 pm in the cafeteria.

Students will stay after school to rehearse and prepare for the performance. Please send them to school in their concert clothes with a substantial snack. Concert dress is choir shirt, plain blue jeans, and sneakers that don't light up or make noise.

The concert program is:

Here Comes the Sun Sunshine On My Shoulder
          Soloists - Vanesa and Caleb (Morgan and Bryna)  
Moon and Me
          Soloist - Alice (Caleb)  
The Path to the Moon
          Soloist - Solomon (Alice)  
Moon River  When You Wish Upon a Star
          Soloist - Andy (Citlaly) 
  The Second Star to the Right
          Soloist - Evelin (Citlaly)  
Star Canon
          Soloist - Brooke (Maria)  
Star Wars Theme


Students are invited to write short poems on a nature theme to be included in the program. These can be submitted on Edmodo until Monday, March 3rd. A few of the poems will be selected to be read by their authors during our concert, and some will be printed in the concert program as well.

Our 1st and 2nd grade choir, Ositos, is not performing on this concert.

GCISD’s First Annual District-Wide
Walk for Water
Benefitting

Who? Anyone and everyone in GCISD and the community.

What? A 1K and 5K Walk/Run. After the race, we will have free Rita’s ice, a Fun Station for children that includes water-related games, live music from the CHHS Band and Drumline, and free gift cards and giveaways.

Water is Basic is a nonprofit organization leading the effort to drill wells in South Sudan, Africa to provide clean water for residents. For more information, visit waterisbasic.org.
When? World Water Day, Saturday, March 22nd, 2014
The race starts at 10:00 am, so arrive early to pick up your t-shirt.
On-site registration: 8:30-9:30 am.

Where? Colleyville Heritage High School,
5401 Heritage Ave, Colleyville, TX 76034

How? Click the link below to register. Cost is $15 per person and includes your race day t-shirt.
Visit: http://weblink.donorperfect.com/GCWalkforWater to register for the race or donate!





Of course, there is a competition! The elementary, middle, and high school that raises the most money for clean water wells will receive a hand-painted jerry can to display at their school.

* By signing up for the Walk, you are providing FOUR people with clean water for the rest of their lives.


Please join us in providing clean water for the people of South Sudan by registering for the race and/or donating online. Together, we have the

Wow we have been working hard the last couple of days.  We finished our historical figures class book in ibook.  Then we finished our dialogue project by publishing our narratives with dialogue to an app called Bookiabi.  Ask you student to share with story with you they are amazing.  Here is a sample.  Kameron's Book

Amazing Day!!!!!!

Wow today we started working on our class historical figures book using ibook author.  They all got half of their pages done.  I can't wait for you to see the finished books at open house in a couple of weeks. 

Today we started our water project.  To kick off the project we observed the differences between salt and fresh water.

Check out our project.project

Don't forget that the Valentine Party for 2nd Grade will be from 12:00-1:00 due to our PLC time this Friday.  We can't wait to see you there.

Today we got to Skype with a class in Michigan.  Here is the project we worked on here in class.

Snowmen at night
Distance learning
Building challenge

We will be using skype to visit a 2nd grade classroom in Michigan.
Both classrooms will be reading the book snowmen at night. The students in both classrooms will create snowmen doing something at night. You will write 3 sentences giving clues to the other class about what your snowman is doing.

Listen to the book using the following Link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgMlYDfXpiM

Building challenge
Create a snowman doing something at night using toilet paper rolls. You can cut them and add props made out of paper. You can also add a background using one sheet of white paper.

Final Project
You will take a picture of your snowman and put it in picollage and write 3 sentences that will give the other class clues about what your snowman is doing. Do not tell them directly make them infer from the image and your written clues.

Good Luck. I can’t wait to see your creations!

 

Then today we got to share with the class in Michigan.  It was so much fun.   

 

Today was the redesign day. We used our redesigned mortar mixtures to build our redesigned walls. Some of the groups used more water. Most groups went with a clay, clay, and soil mixture. One group went with a clay, clay, sand mixture.  Here are some pictures of our new walls.

 

We tested our walls with the demolition ball. Some groups walls started to break apart after 2 to 3 hits. A couple of groups made it to the level 4 with 2 hits at that level. We then analyzed all the walls and talked about what made those successful. Both of the groups that made it to the level 4 had a mortar mixture that was 2 clay and one sand. One group used 4 Tablespoons water and the other group used 5 Tablespoons. Both groups used a large rock on the bottom design. We then took the information from our observations and created our redesign for our mortar and wall plan for tomorrow.

GCISD’s First Annual District

Wide

Walk for Water

Benefitting

Who?

Anyone and ever

yone in GCISD and the community.

What?

A

1K and

5K Walk/Run. After the race, we will have free Rita’s ice, a Fun Station for

children that

includes fun water

related games, and live music from the CHHS Band and

Drumline.

Water is Basic is a nonprofit organization leading the effort to drill wells in South Sudan,

Africa to provide clean water for residents. For more information, visit

wateri

sbasic.org

.

When?

World Water Day,

Saturday,

March 22

nd

, 2014

The race starts at 10:00 am, so arrive early to pick up your t

shirt.

On

site registration: 8:30

9:30

am

.

Where?

Colleyville Heritage High School,

5401 Heritage Ave, Colleyville, TX 76034

How?

You

can sign up by going to the website below. Cost is

$15 per person and includes

your race day t

shirt.

Visit:

http://weblink.donorperfect.com/GCWalkforWater

to register for the race

or donate

!

Of

course, there is a competition!

The

elementary

, middle, and high

school

that

raise

s

the most money for clean water wells will receive

a hand

painted jerry can

to display at their

school.

•

$3.75 provides clean water for one person in South Sudan for the rest of

his/her life.

•

By signing up for the Walk, you are providing FOUR people with

clean

water.

Please join us in providing clean water for the people of South Sudan by

registering for the race and/or donating online. Together, we have the

power to

radically transform

thousands of lives!

Deadline to register online is

March 5

th

, but you can

also register on race day.

Today in STEM we got to create our 1st mortar mixture and build our 1st wall. We used our plan from Thursday to create our 1st build.

Today in STEM we finished the ASK step of the engineering design process. We started the PLAN step. We picked the materials we will use in our first wall design. We then picked the amount we will use of each material. We are allowed 3 scoops of material and 5 T of water. Then we looked at the wall movie again to get ideas for our build. We also examined the types of rocks we will use for the build. Then they designed the wall they will build on Monday. Here are some of their plan sheets.

Today for our STEM lesson we tested the mortar sandwiched we made yesterday. We created two tests for the mortar. They were the Sticky Test and the Earthquake Test. Before we started testing we did some predicting about the results based on our observations without touching. Then we conducted the tests and the results were the clay worked the best on both tests. The sand worked somewhat on the earthquake test but not at all on the sticky test. We then looked at real mortar and realized how many of the properties were like the clay powder. But we concluded that it was more gritty than the clay powder. So we are thinking that maybe we should add some sand to the clay powder.

Today in STEM we made mortar sandwiches out of the wet earth materials from yesterday. Yesterday we concluded that the wet materials were more sticky and would be better for the mortar. Today we took the 3 materials(clay powder, dirt, and sand) and put them between two tiles. We labeled them and are leaving them to dry overnight. We also decided on the tests we will use tomorrow to test the mortars stickiness and strength. We decided on a "Sticking Test" and "Earth Quake Test".

Today in our Great Wall STEM lesson we were conducting experiments to figure out which materials would make a good mortar. We were working on the "Ask" step of the Engineering Design Process. They were given bags of dry earth materials and then bowls of wet earth materials. They examined the properties of each when they were wet and dry and made comparisons. Then they made predictions about which mortar materials will work best for our wall building.

Today in STEM we went on a Wall Walk. We know that we are going to build walls with mortar just like Yi Min and Chen did in our STEM story Yi Min's Great Wall. We went on the wall walk to build our schema about the way engineers build walls today and in the past. Then we watched as short movie about walls. wall movie We created a chart with some of the examples we saw them we compared how all the walls were the same and different. We looked at the walls with mortar and the walls without and discuss how we feel our wall would be stronger with the mortar. So then we made a chart recording our thoughts on what would make a strong mortar. To extend our schema about walls and what makes a strong wall we had a  building challenge. They had to create one that was staggered like the ones in the videos and one that was stacked to test which one was the strongest design.   The children used many of the stacking examples we saw on our wall walk to help with the challenge.