What do plants need to survive?

As part of our current project based learning unit, we started an experiment to prove what plants need to survive.

Early Release Day
Wednesday, February 28th is an early release day.  Students will be dismissed at 12:52 PM.

Snowball Party
A2STEAM is having a snowball party for grades K-5 this Friday from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM.  Usually there is family friendly dancing in the gym and other crafts and activities throughout the school.

Curriculum Overview
Science -  We have begun a project-based-unit on living things.  Yesterday we had a classroom discussion about what plants need to survive and I challenged the students to come up with ways to prove that plants need water, light, and air to survive.  From those ideas we started an experiment to prove what plants really needed in order to live.  You can see more pictures of the start of the experiment if you scroll down below.  The overall driving question for this unit is "How can we grow our own healthy snacks?"

Reading - Fiction books usually have story lines where a particular problem rises to a climax and then is resolved.  This week we will work on identifying and tracking those problems.

Writing - As we conduct an experiment trying to prove what plants need to survive, students will writing about their observations of the different groups of plants.  We will also continue writing personal letters.

Math - This week we will study measurement and use blocks, inches, and centimeters to measure the length and height of different things.

Word Study - We are beginning to practice hearing short vowels in different words.

There is also a 'no light' group hidden in a cabinet.