In this project, our learning was centered around the questions,“What is healthy food?”, “What does the word healthy mean?”, and “How can we help kids in our school eat healthy?”. Students learn studied the food groups and what it means to eat healthy. We read numerous articles from newspapers and magazines about people and businesses in the community that are making changes to encourage healthy lifestyles. We focused on non fiction text to help in our research. We will also used data collection techniques to see how many kids are eating fruits and vegetables with their snack and lunch. This information was put into graphs and used as we brainstorm how we can help other kids in our school eat healthy. To help us reach this goal, we made multiple healthy snacks as a class, and wrote our own recipes to share with students in our school.  Throughout this project, students had opportunities to conduct interviews, create, critique, and revise written work, learn from experts in the culinary field, and participate in various forms of fieldwork. Students created how-to videos to teach about healthy snacks that would help kids want to eat healthy. 

In this project, we investigated light in two different ways: The light within our world, and the light within ourselves. We became scientists as we learned about and experimented with a variety of different types of light in our world. Our investigations centered on sunlight, electricity, refraction, and the color spectrum. In our Engineering exploratory, students made solar ovens using various materials to trap heat. They even made s’mores and shared them with the staff!  In math, we studied the connection between time and sunlight. Our math instruction focused on telling time, elapsed time, and sundials.

 

Alongside of this, we delved deeply into understanding the light inside of ourselves. Each of us is unique and has our own special strengths and passions. We used poetry and self-portraits as means of expressing and celebrating our inner lights. The students learned to use Blogger to type their original poems and stories. The students also designed and created lanterns as a way to bring more light into our world. As a class, we sold our lanterns and donated the proceeds to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, to help shine our light into the community. The purpose behind our final products from this project were to communicate who we are, and encourage others to shine their light a little bit brighter as well.