Earth

Presented by Ellie, Grace and Hagin. What I cannot capture on film is the light show representing the movement of the Earth and the moon around the sun. Excellent job!

Rockets

Lucas and Yazan presented information about the spaceships used to fly to the moon. They created a model representing the parts of the ship. Great job!

Uranus

Emir, Alex and Ryan did a great job telling the story of how Uranus ended up

being titled on its side! Watch the video for details.

Uranus

Mars

Kaleigh choose to do her report independently. She taught us a lot about Mars! Did you know that Mars has two moons? It is also similar to Earth because it has a canyon, a mountain and wind. Scientists think that at one time there was water on Mars.

The Phases of the Moon

Phases of the Moon

Another example of the use of Extension Menus in our classroom. This group researched the phases of the moon and developed a presentation to teach the class. We learned about waxing, waning and gibbous moons! Great Job!

Winner of Create a Label

Speech by Grace

I think you should sell this drink because number on it's healthy for all kids AND adults. Number two, it's great for diets.

Number three it tastes GREAT, no, not great, fabulous!

That's why I think you should sell Pineapple Paradise.

Saturn TV Game Show

Test your knowledge! How much do you know about Saturn?

Extension Menus

For each planner, I have developed an Extension menu whose purpose is to encourage students to extend and expand their thinking. The menus have a series of questions that are based on the depth and complexity icons used in HISD's gifted and talented curriculum. I then aligned these to our planners key questions. The students choose what they are interested in, form groups if they wish and begin researching and compiling information to answer the questions. The next step is to create a product to showcase the knowledge gained and present it to the class. The group shown above decided to learn more about Saturn and created a TV game show to present the information!

STAAR Writing

For Writing Wednesday, I put the cover sheet for the STAAR test on the smartboard. The Soaring Pilots came in (after two days of testing) and exclaimed, "Oh no! We have to take another test today!" I reminded them that it was Writing Wednesday and this was their writing prompt. They immediately got to work writing stories about the STAAR test, strategies, Strategy Man and answering so many questions.

The stories were so good no one wanted to stop writing!!

I promised I would type them all so keep a lookout for these great stories to be

published here in the very near future!

Winner of Create a Cereal

by Ariana

I ate my cereal and while I was eating it I thought "What if I could teleport to school?" I kept on thinking about that and when I got to school it only took me 10 minutes to walk to school. But I didn't know that that was Power Cereal in action. When I woke up the next day I ate my cereal and saw the clock and it was already 7:50! I said, " I wish I was at school ." I turned around to get my shoes and there I was at school with my shoes in my hand. After I got home by teleportng myself, I checked the box and on the side I found out how I could teleport myself.

3 Dimensional Shapes

We found an intriguing way to explore 3 dimensional shapes! First we had to create the cubes, cones, prisms and pyramids by folding a 2 dimensional piece of paper. Next, we had to use the new shapes to create a robot with a purpose! As our knowledge about 3 dimensional object grew we applied that to the project also. Each robot now has a book describing the shapes and how many faces, edges or vertices each shape has. Our final step is to write a story with our robot as a main character. Those stories are in the process of being written...

Winner of Create A Billboard

Dear Mr. Sam editor of Time for Kids,

I think billboards should be all around the country because some of them carry special messages that everyone should know. Messages like save water, help wildfires or even messages like READ. If we put up important messages we could change the country.

Best Regards,
Catelyn

Compliment Frame

In our classroom, we have what is known as the compliment frame.

Whenever we notice a random act of kindness an anonymous note appears on their desk in this frame. Or if we want to let someone know we appreciate their kindness we write a note too.

Race to the Moon

The Soaring Pilots spent some time researching space exploration through expository texts. We enjoyed finding out more about the race to be the first men on the moon. The culminating activity was to create a summary bag which included three main ideas with details from the story. The fun part was creating an image based on the information that we read.

The results are amazing!

Math All Around Us!!

We have been very busy this past week mastering our math objectives! Each day our class

was set up with math stations for one objective. We rotated around the room

exploring and learning each objective.

Program

Imagine our surprise when we arrived in the cafeteria to find pilots! Needless to say, The Soaring Pilots were very excited. We got a front row seat and asked so many questions. Afterwards, we stuck around to take pictures and ask many more questions.

Solar System Presentations

Students worked in cooperative groups to create a visual and oral presentation.

How The World Works

We are soaring to another planner: How the World Works. As an introduction to our central idea that humans explore a solar system seeking to explain the natural world, we spent some time discovering what our solar system is like. The students used fiction and expository texts along with computers to research one aspect of the solar system.

Valentine's Day

The Soaring Pilots had a great time creating one of a kind, original valentines boxes! Mine had soaring pilots all over it, of course! We had a great time sharing treats with each other. We also got to judge our neighbor's (Mr. Nyugen) valentine car parade.