A Note from our PrincipalHello Walker families! It is encouraging to see our hours of daylight getting longer and knowing that spring is in a few weeks. We are excited to announce that two of our Walker students have the opportunity to showcase their ability in a display of cooking excellence at the Sodexo Future Chefs Competition. Janiyah B. and Tanner P. will be participating in this District competition at Nathan Hale High School on March 11. We wish them both the best and know that they will both represent Walker well. Good luck Janiyah and Tanner. Important Upcoming Dates: March 2 -13 ~ Pennies for Patients Fundraiser March 13 ~ PTA March Madness Event 6-8 March 16 ~ No School for Students March 17 ~ PTA Meeting @ 6pm March 28 ~ Pack 516 Pinewood Derby March 30 ~ End of Quarter 3 April 3 ~ Report cards posted on Skyward April 6 - 10 ~ Spring Break - No school As spring approaches, we are also coming close to our Walker PTA having elections for two of our board positions. PTA is an integral part of our school community and works to implement programs/activities that engage families in student success and school improvements. Without a Walker PTA our school and students would be at a loss. In order for our PTA to continue, we are in need of some parents that would be interested in being part of the PTA board. Our next PTA meeting is on March 17 at 6pm. Please feel free to join us as we are going to discuss the nomination and election process. News From Our TeamsTeam Persistence: Team Persistence has been hard at work exploring many fairy tales and their fractured counterparts! We're enjoying comparing similar stories and finding similar characters throughout - like the wolf! Students have enjoyed weekly snacks relating to the fairy tale of the week, art projects and special choice time activities! Team Respect: Team Respect has launched our next project entitled "What school could be!" It is based off a book by Ted Dintersmith. We will be researching what school was like long ago and today, observing different school structures for learning, environment, and relationships, teach a lesson of our own, and finally create our own school. We launched our project with a skype session with a woman who is 103 years old! She told us all about what school was like long ago! We also has some of our administration come and share the book, "What schools could be" with our students. Team Respect also celebrated 100th day and Valentine's day with some fun projects! Students were asked to get creative and make something to represent 100. We had students dress the part, make posters, snacks and so much more! For Valentine's day they got to pick one friend to make a "special" secret valentine for! They watched the friend throughout the week and wrote 3 special comments for them! We then celebrated each other with a kindness party! Team Integrity: Students on Team Integrity are gaining valuable learning and experiences during their math instruction and workshop. Students are connecting math to the real world, through our inquiry problem solving. Some groups are wrapping up fractions, others measurement, and all are spiraling through Numbers and Operations to keep our skills sharp. Check out out some of our pictures trying to ‘escape the room’ fraction-style! Team Diversity: Team Diversity has been working on measurement throughout the month of February. To wrap up our unit the students brought a stuffed animal to school and were asked to design a sleeping bag for their animal using measurement. Great measuring! Another topic that we are exploring, is water on Earth! Our scientists used the scientific method to find out what happens to food coloring and ice cubes in fresh water vs. salt water. Fun experiment to try at home! Team Excellence East: In Excellence East, we are proud to announce we have a finalist for Sodexo's Future Chef competition.... Janiyah Butler! Good luck Janiyah! In math, we have been applying the skills we have learned to real life or fun mystery-solving situations. We have shopped at the grocery store, created gallon man, eaten at a restaurant, compared prices at two different stores to find the best bargain on brands, and even solved the Case of the Missing Donuts! In Literacy we began our discovery of Greek Mythology, and in Inquiry we are trying to convince others to move to our assigned state by telling about all the environmental, economic, entertainment, and meteorological benefits of living there! Team Excellence West: It has been a busy month! Excellence West students explored the regions of the United States during our last Inquiry unit. After learning about the geography, history, economy and culture of each region, students were divided into region groups. Each group worked collaboratively to create interactive timelines, iMovies, Google Earth trips, physical displays and a plethora of presentations. Need help deciding on a future vacation spot? Ask one of our region experts! Take a look at some of our amazing projects using the links below: https://earth.google.com/web/data=Mj8KPQo7CiExWG1kTE05VGZ5MUp0WmY0RXAwUEtIMW9fNVNzai1NZVkSFgoUMDk4OTkyNUU2MTExOTQ4RUMzNDc https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ihaRRFB8pjprB197ZMx4sQH4N2XnrEw0/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/open?id=1LtukmSbCVqOaOI_V6ay2g1FplfnTpmOe In reading, students learned how to utilize "functional" text. Examples of functional text include schedules, recipes, directions, flyers, etc. To support the Sodexo recipe contest, each student submitted a recipe for a "Lunch Item Reimagined." Our very own Tanner Proeber was selected to participate in the district competition with his White Chicken Chili recipe. In addition to the district, we held our very own competition in Excellence West. The following students demonstrated their culinary skills: Brianna Kendall: Fruit Taco Savannah Byrge: Chicken Roll-Ups Kendyll Anderson: California Roll Sushi Molly Ficks (Mackenzie Lotze (assistant)): Cheesy Hashbrown Bites Noah Vanderhoef: Hot-dog Burritos Francesca Verbos: Chicken BLT Sandwich Braylin Donald: Taco Stew Masyn Brown: Cheeseburger Omelet Jameson Armstrong: Chicken Parmesan A Aidan Weick: Biscuits and Gravy In addition to work, we like to have a little fun! We learned through hands-on activities at Discovery World and created our vey own mannequin challenge. Check it out here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gxl3JdvCKjGc4PoNIyEwTLaxfTkYC79k Team Endurance: Our students are really diving into our Project Based Learning unit about Habitats around the world! When their research is complete, they will create an animal that showcases all they have learned. As the creator and designer of the animal, they decide what their animal needs to survive and where their animal with thrive. Students will be able to show off their knowledge using a variety of methods, this can include a diorama, a video, a TikTok, a drawing, or pictures. We have many different learners in our room so they will be able to embrace the decision of how to demonstrate their learning! Updates from Specials and ClubsStudent Council: This week Student Council kicked off our Pennies for Patients Campaign. Your child will be bringing home a letter explaining all of the different ways that you can help be a hero to children who are fighting Leukemia and Lymphoma. Please look for your child's classroom information link to donate online. Together, Let's Take Out Cancer One Drop At A Time! Thank you. Tech: We are half way through our six week rotation of Tech Specials and we're working on some great creations! Each class is working on using Keynote to create their very own animations and gifs. We look forward to sharing these with our families through Seesaw in the coming weeks. During class we also make sure to spend time working on our computer coding skills. Here are some kids hard at work creating their own levels in Code Spark.
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