Students developed an annual plan for engaging all grade levels in exploratory and experiential learning activities in the school Habitat and in classrooms. This year’s cohort planted pansies with kindergartners, harvested sweet potatoes, planted tulips for fifth graders to dissect, created force and motion STEM challenges for first graders and started lettuce seedlings for second graders. Learn more about their project at the students’ website.
Cohort member: Kelley Organek
Students: 5th graders at Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology
Essential Questions: How can we create more time for exploratory learning and experiments at Cora Kelly?
Grade 5 English Standards:
5.2 The student will create multimodal presentations that effectively communicate ideas.
a) Effectively use verbal and nonverbal communication skills to plan and deliver collaborative and individual, formal, and informal interactive presentations.
b) Maintain eye contact with listeners.
c) Organize content sequentially around major ideas.
d) Use language and style appropriate to the audience, topic, and purpose.
e) Ask and answer questions to gather or clarify information presented orally.
5.7 The student will write in a variety of forms to include narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive.
a) Select audience and purpose.
b) Introduce and develop a topic, incorporating evidence and supporting details.
c) Organize information to convey a central idea.
d) Clearly state a position, including supporting reasons and evidence to persuade the intended audience.
e) Write multi-paragraph compositions.
f) Use precise and descriptive vocabulary to create tone and voice.
g) Vary sentence structure by using transition words and prepositional phrases.
h) Revise writing for clarity of content, using specific vocabulary and information.