Projects are all finished up!

This week, a lot of our time was spent practicing graduation, singing our school song, and our super secret skit for the extravaganza! We hope you enjoy! We have some exciting days ahead.

Practice, Practice, Practice! We are getting so excited for the Extravaganza, but we must keep it secret. We are looking forward to sharing our performance with our friends and family next week!

Okay... maybe one sneak peak - see picture!

This week we spent time in the afternoons ironing out all the details of our Extravaganza performance coming up on Thursday, June 5, 20,14. Don't even try to get any information out of us, because we are keeping it a secret. What we can tell you though....is that our moment in the spotlight will showcase our knowledge about the human body and keeping ours healthy!!!

On Friday, we had a special visitor in the afternoon. Beth McIntosh, a local music expert, came in to talk about song writing and a little bit about our school-wide extravanganza song. She brought interesting instruments that we got to play and she sang about local animals. It was very exciting to have such a talented musician in our classroom!

With Emily's help, we helped enhance our chicken habitat on campus - birds that are an important part of our lives every day!

On Wednesday afternoon, we headed over to the Jackson Hole Fish Hatchery. We wanted to see an  operation that is similar to the one where our trout eggs actually came from. We were excited to meet Mike and his crew and get a tour of the facility. We saw trout in each stage of their lives and made that connection to the tank in our classroom. We were able to see eggs in incubators. Our eggs were similar, but were a different color, and instead of just thirty, like we started with...there were 30,000! We also saw what trout look like at about one year of age, who are about to be released.

Thursday was the big day when we released our trout. Before we went into the field, Anna's friend James, a fisheries biologist for Friends of the Teton River, paid us a visit! He told us how trout are a big part of both his professional and personal life. He showed us flies he uses when he fishes, pictures of him catching different types of trout all over the world, and introduced us to a game where we match flies to pictures of the actual insects. Then, he took us outside to show us how he casts a fly rod. We learned so much about our local fishery and the importance of fly fishing in this valley. In the afternoon, we went to Connie's Pond and, before we released our trout, did a quick habitat assessment to ensure that we were releasing them into a good environment. We saw stoneflies, water striders, and caddisflies! We had mixed feelings about releasing our trout - some sad, some happy - but decided that the right thing to do is to let them be in their natural environment. Adios trout friends!

We debriefed our experience during Projects time on Friday. Here is one thought from a student - "I can't wait to go fishing there again this summer. I'm never going to eat any fish in there, because it could be our rainbow trout."
 

Projects time this week was spent reflecting on our Human Body Project. Giving students the opportunity to really close a project with ample time to process all the information they learned - and fun they had - is crucial for long-lasting understanding. Everyone got a chance to share with the group their favorite part of the project and some things that they learned. Here are a few examples from our reflective session:

"What I learned is that when we keep our bodies healthy by eating healthy food it's good for you!" -- Neenah

"I learned that you have a small stomach but it gets bigger when you get old." -- Davis

"I learned that you have a little invisible force field so nothing can get in your eye." -- Sam

"I learned that your heart beats to keep you alive." -- Lincoln

"I learned about healthy stuff and keeping our body healthy. You keep your body healthy with food and water." -- Abby