On Tuesday in Ms. Magro’s classroom, 5th graders had the opportunity to read to a preschool class at Pinewood Elementary! The 5th graders shared their love of reading with preschool students who enjoyed the Halloween/fall themed books that were being read to them. Reading rocks!
Thank you, Bryce, for the amazing cinematography of the following (click it) Slo-Motion Video
6th grade Mathletes used pumpkins to make predictions, measurements and gather data while applying potential energy (aka: Rubber Bands) to their pumpkins. They will upload their results on a shared document created by Mr. Orr, a math teacher in another state. Students all over the US and Canada are compiling and sharing similar data. We will be analyzing the data, noticing trends, and compiling scatter plot graphs to hypothesize about the number of rubber bands it takes to “blow up” a pumpkin!
Pinewood’s Socktober
This month Pinewood will be joining SoulPancake and Kid President to prove that even the smallest acts of love, like donating a pair of socks, can make a big difference in the lives of our neighbors who are homeless by participating in SOCKTOBER! Visit the official Socktober website at: http://soulpancake.com/socktober/
Who: Pinewood Student’s
What: NEW sock donations
Where: Donations in Pinewood lobby (labeled bins)
When: Monday October 19th–
Friday October 30th
Why: Donations will be made to
Fair Haven Ministry
This year Pinewood students have been participating in a new special class. Along with physical education, art, music, and Spanish students are doing STEM. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. STEM has been one of the quickest growing career fields and recent studies have shown a large demand for workers in these fields. We want to ensure all of our kindergarten through sixth grade students are getting a strong foundation in these critical thinking skills to help prepare them to take on more rigorous courses in the Jr. High, High School, and post secondary opportunities.
The STEM curriculum has been very engaging for our students. They are exploring what STEM is and using a design inquiry process to solve “real world” problems. An example of one of the problems the students have solved is to design a corn maze for a local farm. Another problem they have worked to solve his how high of a tower could they design with limited resources. During these activities students are often in groups working on team building skills and communication skills.
Students reading a story about setting up a problem needing to use wind to create energy
Reading as a pair
Creating a paper slide show on what STEM means
Designing a tower
Team work
I encourage you to take sometime to find out more about the Jenison STEM program, it has been a great addition to our already top of the line academic programs.
Earlier this fall, I had the privilege of going with a group of hard working students to McDonalds, and the KidCat football game. McDonalds was so KIND to support our activity by buying dinner! The McDonalds on Baldwin, gets my coffee bucks every time! They are so extremely generous to the causes that matter most to teachers and the community! They are making a difference! THANK YOU!
Second graders raised their masts on the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, as they embarked on a journey across the Atlantic Ocean in hopes of finding land. Christopher Columbus led the way and his fellow explorers followed on the expedition.
