Driving Question:  How can we as Americans learn more about the country we live in?

We have completed our project!  It is so exciting to see how students chose to display their learning.  We feel that we have certainly answered our driving question!  Please join us next Friday to hear our project presentation. 

This week were lucky to have visiting teachers from an independent school in Park City observe our classroom and watch how we do Project Based Learning.  They loved how independent and hardworking the Mustangs were!  A few groups had the opportunity to interview a few of the teachers for their research on their state.  It was amazing watching them work together to come up with questions to ask our guests.  We plan to finish up our state study next week.  We are planning a presentation in combination with an Authors Tea before the end of the year.  We will let you know next week when that will be. 

I am so excited I found our class photo with Nate's grandparents that I thought my camera lost!  We were very lucky to have Sophie's grandmother come visit us and talked to us about Arizona.  We have the best guest speakers!  We finished Arizona!  We took the great information that we learned and created a postcard with facts written in the message.  Check out all of our postcards displayed in our classroom!  Next week we will research the states we have chosen and then we will announce a time for us to present our learning.  

This week on our Road Trip we have been spending the week investigating California.  Students divided into groups depending on interest level (Animals, the Gold Rush, Disneyland, and  Natural Disasters).  We are really becoming great at researching and asking detailed questions about what we want to know.  On Friday we were so lucky to have Nate's grandparents (Grandma Jane and Don) come in to talk to us about Arizona.  They are fascinating at storytelling and they brought in photo's and items to deeper our understanding.  We learned about the Arizona state flag, tarantulas and other desert creatures, different types of cacti along with history of the state and so much more.  Thank you Don and Jane Streubel for sharing your knowledge and adventures with us. 

I am also thankful for their camera because my photos were not on my camera for one reason or another (probably the operator) and so they emailed me photos from their camera to put in the newsletter!  Whew!

This week we are finishing our creative stories and choosing the one we want to publish and put in our portfolio.  It is a difficult decision choosing just one!  We also met with our Reading Buddies!  We interviewed our buddy to learn more about them.  We came up with really great questions! 

Paul Maddex from TSS stopped by to talk to us about his experience filming the Ididarod in the 90's.  The kids were fascinated by his tales.  They had a lot of questions for Paul and we learned a lot. 

We are going to study the states California and Arizona next week together as a group.  After we complete those two states students will then either work on their own or with a partner to investigate states of their choosing.  We will invite families and friends to listen to our presentations. 

Now that we have Alaska wrapped up we decided where to go next and how we will go about it! Our first step was to choose a route for our next Reading Challenge! The states along our route will be the states that we will research to complete our road trip across America project.  Students chose from our list the states they wanted to investigate either individually or with a partner (ask your child what state they will be investigating).  Together as a class we will study California and Arizona.  Students will learn about landforms, landmarks, animals and interesting people/facts of their chosen state. 

Our States of Study

California

New Mexico

Kansas

Louisiana

Mississippi

Kentucky

Pennsylvania

New York

Road Trip Reading Challenge:  Read each night at home and log your time and have mom/dad sign your sheet.  Bring in your home sheet to record your time reading at home.  Remember we decided that this time 1 minute of reading = 1 mile. 

We are putting the finishing touches on our Alaska research and our display board! We watched a great DVD that Huck brought in about the Iditarod.  Our Iditarod Reading Challenge has come to an end. The sled team   crossed the finish line first with         reading minutes.  Our Reading Challenge was so popular we came up with another Reading Challenge that will begin after break.  We will be racing across the United States from the West Coast to the East Coast.  Our Challenge motivated everyone in the class and was such a fun way to track our daily reading that we will continue.  We will create the details together when we get back to school.  

This week we have wrapped up Alaska and we are creating a display board to show our learning.  The Mustangs are working in groups that are investigating different categories (landmarks, landforms and animals)  that will help us answer our driving question.  After we create our display board we will move on to a different state!  Our road trip through Alaska was so interesting that we stayed longer than expected!  Alaska is fascinating! 

Iditarod reading teams are nearing the finish line!  We will wrap up our Iditarod racing next week.  The Mustangs enjoyed our Reading Challenge so much we are thinking of creating another challenge.  Daniel suggested the Indy 500.  What a great idea.  We will talk more about it after we complete the Iditarod!  Thank you parents for helping your child keep track of their reading time!

A Note from our wonderful Grad Student Kim: 

This week I had privilege of working with the Mustangs on their project. Our guiding questions was; How can we use the landscape equation to learn more about Alaska?  Each day we focused on one aspect of the TSS landscape equation (L=A+B+C or Landscape = Abiotic + Biotic + Culture).

Tuesday we focused on Culture in which we had the honor of a local dog sled team come and visit us.  The Desert Dog Sled Dog Adventures from Ashton came to the school, talked about their sleds, how to take care of the dogs, answered questions from the kids and let all the students get pulled on the sled.  What a treat!

Wednesday we spent the morning understanding more about the Biotic features of Alaska.  This included bears, trees and even what it meant to be a racer on the Iditarod trail in the winter.  By taking a few students and dressing them each into one of these things we were able to talk about adaptations that certain species have to survive the winter in Alaska.

Finally today we looked at the Abiotic features of Alaska, specifically focusing on the terrain of the Iditarod route.  We used coloring and google maps and earth to understand that not all of Alaska is covered in mountains and that the race even goes over the frozen ocean.  As a conclusion to the week the students built their own race outside in which they were given the objective of including two pieces from each day (two landforms, two biotic pieces and two cultural pieces). 

It was truly a pleasure being with the Mustangs and hope that I can be a guest teacher again for them!  

Thank you, 

Kim

Our project:  How can we as Americans learn more about the country where we live?  This week we broke up into our four study groups 1) Landforms 2) Landmarks 3) Famous People of Alaska 4) Animals 

Each group made a list of resources they will need to find out more about their area of study.  We are excited to begin our research!  After Alaska we will move on to another state.  We cannot wait to hear all about dog mushing on Tuesday! 

We are still going to work on creating an authentic habitat for our box turtle!  He is so much fun to watch! If any parents are box turtle experts please let us know. 

Next week we will be forming project groups based on what students want to study.  We will continue this week with our investigation of Alaska.  The categories that students will study are:  landforms, landmarks, people and/or animals. Students will choose ways that they will organize and present their learning.  During this study of the United States we will continue to work on creating a habitat for Mr. T our turtle. 

This week we have been continuing to focus on Alaska.  We are learning about the Iditarod race and have had more guest speakers that have shared their experiences with us.  We decided to create an Iditarod Reading Challenge in our class.  Together we made up the rules, created the Iditarod route map and divided into sled dog teams.  Each team will be reading and keeping track of their minutes.  There will be rewards at each checkpoint.  The students voted to receive money at each checkpoint to  coincide with the money they earn for their jobs.  All of the money earned will be used at our class store.

This week Nate's grandparents (Grandma Jane and Grandpa Don) came in and presented about Alaska! They brought in items for us to observe, photos and maps.   We learned so much!  They inspired us to have dog sled races outside as well as creating an Iditarod reading challenge.  We read a book called Granite about the Iditarod champion Susan Butcher and her amazing dog Granite.  Caite the Pre k teacher came in to show us photos of her experience in Alaska as a dog musher! We learned about the amazing team of dogs she worked with as well as how the sled worked.   We loved it! We will be investigating Alaska a little further and then we will be off on our road trip across the USA!