Student Council
10/25/2019
An integral part of the school. The student council is the voice of the students. The student council helps share ideas, interests, and concerns with the teachers and the school principal. It gives students an opportunity to develop leadership and 21st century skills by organizing and carrying out school activities and projects. As well as planning events that contribute to the PNA school spirit and community. An important aspect of the student council is that they also help raise funds for the school. By organizing school wide activities, including social events, and community projects.
From our 'Night At The Museum' event, the culmination of our Space Week. The student council raised money by selling space ice cream and astronaut juice. Using the money raised on that night and combined with the money previously raised by the student council the school will be purchasing a new water bottle fountain for students use up on the third floor. Woo! No more trekking up and down 3 flights of stairs for water! Space Week
10/18/2019
The World Space Week is October 4th - October 10th annually. So, we maybe a week late but nevertheless PNA celebrated its own Space Week with all its usual gusto and enthusiasm. After math in the mornings, usual lessons were suspended in favor of a full intensive week of space related lessons, activities and curriculum. Culminating in our 'Night At The Museum' event and a whole school trip to the planetarium. Grade classes worked on their own class projects for the museum in the morning but in the afternoon grades were mixed and split into 'crews'. These crews worked together in the afternoon to perform space related experiments, activities and to solve a critical mission. The 4th Grade project was focused around 'Robots in Space'. After laying the framework of why we use robots and what they are built to do. We narrowed our focus onto 2 of the most famous space faring robots. The Mars Rovers 'Spirit' and 'Opportunity'. NASA sent these robots to Mars with 4 main goals. 1. Determine whether life ever arose on Mars. 2. Characterize the climate of Mars. 3. Characterize the geology of Mars. 4. Prepare for Human exploration. With these goals in mind 4th grade embarked on the challenge of planning, designing, building and coding their own interplanetary rovers that could strive to achieve those ambitions goals. In the afternoons during Space Week. Grades were split into mixed aged 'crews'. Collaboratively as a group they had to complete experiments, solve problems and over come challenges. These ranged from designing and creating rocket balloons that could generate enough thrust to deliver a payload, conducting and investigation into the surface tension of water and how it acts in space to construction our own modules for the ISS. Luckily the students were aided in their challenges by Su Curley an engineer from NASA who works on and develops the space suits that the astronauts ware during an EVA. She provided much information and many insights into the technology that astronauts use and was able to answer a huge amount of questions that the students had. Many of which seemed to revolve around the myriad of different ways one could die in space. We were also fortune enough to be able to Skype with John Herrington who was the first Native American astronaut and who visited the ISS and performed an EVA during his time there. It was amazing to listen to them speak and inspiring to hear their stories. So we are grateful to them for giving their time to us. And also to Rich who showed and shared some of his space collection with us including some moon rocks! The students all had a fantastic week and hopefully learnt something new! I know I did!
My Favourite Subjects
10/11/2019
Math in 4th Grade is a mixture of hands on activities, exploring tangible materials and investigations combined with critical thinking and mathematical reasoning and developing formal methods. There is an expectation as a class for hard work and collaboration. Solving problems together and helping each other overcome challenges. Paving the way for students to collectively learn and grow together, by doing. Throughout the Lower School at PNA, we use Bridges in Mathematics curriculum for math instruction. The Bridges math curriculum "focuses on developing students’ deep understandings of mathematical concepts, proficiency with key skills, and ability to solve complex and novel problems." -Math Learning Center. "Bridges blends direct instruction, structured investigation, and open exploration. It taps into the intelligence and strengths of all students by presenting material that is as linguistically, visually, and kinesthetically rich as it is mathematically powerful." - Math Learning Center. Over the last two weeks we have been using and learning units of measurement including length, distance, weight, mass and liquid volume. We have also developed the importance of place value and the expanded form of numbers. We have been exploring the value of what each place value and number is actually worth and the amount it represents. Creating a display to visualize this. So when we come across a number we can understand what it means and how to use it. As our social studies unit progresses, with a current focus on geography, we have continued our study of maps and have now moved onto looking at regions of the US. Identifying features of each region and what sets each region apart from one another; looking at its physical geography, land area, population density, economic factors as well as famous landmarks and places. Each student choose their own region to research and over the week created an information board about their region to present to one another and to create a display on the stairway for other students to look at and learn from. Finished products! VCOP
10/4/2019
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Martina HenkeMartina Henke has been a K-8 educator for 30+ years. A life-long learner, she loves working with kids of all ages, new technology, great books, fiber arts, and her wonderful family! Archives
April 2021
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