The Weekly Newsletter
Week 28, April 24-28
Welcome back! We had a great week as we got really into all of our new quests and got tons of dedicated and hard work in. That being said, it was a pretty normal week here! Here’s a look at some highlights from the week:
For the personal finance quest this week, the navigators learned all about the stock market! We are using an awesome website that allows the students to play the stock market in real time….they’re really getting their feet wet as day traders!
This week in the physics quest, the foundation studio learned all about work and force. They completed challenges to test acceleration and truly understand how gravity is constant and cannot be changed.
Our two new technology classes- Developing Your Web Presence and Computational Literacy- went really well! The students are gaining a ton of valuable knowledge about the world of the web and developing skills that are becoming more and more critical as our world is shifting into the digital realm. In Developing Your Web Presence, they began delving deep into the history of the internet and world wide web in order to gain deeper knowledge. In Computational Literacy the students explored tools and even created their own apps!
This week for navigator history, the students did a ton of research on the Korean War. They explored the reasons why it started, why Korea was split up into North and South, and who the major players involved in the war were. They learned what the fighting was like, where the front lines were, what the drafting process what like, and what other countries were involved.
In history for foundation, the students learned all about the start of WW1, specifically US involvement. They did a fun activity learning about telegrams and how experts would decode them, leading to lots of conflicts with other countries.
In art this week, the students continued their drawing project. The foundation students practiced drawing in a new way- on grids. They were given pictures of their favorite characters and did an exercise where they drew one piece at a time rather than looking at the whole picture at once. The navigators did an exercise with still life, and did gesture drawings of still objects placed next to each other.
The navigators wrote awesome news articles in writing workshop this week! They were a blast to read! The assignment was to choose a topic from a hat and write an article about it. The catch?: each student was either had to write a real or fake article, also dependent on what they chose from a hat. Their challenge was to use and stick to the news values and code of ethics while writing a gripping, interesting, and unbiased news article. We are excited to hear them next week and for the reveal of what’s real and what’s fake!
For the foundation biography quest, the students have chosen their heroes they are going to write about and have begun their research! Their first step was to fill out a KWL chart (know/ want to know/ and learned) and to start their bibliography sheet so they can become excellent and ethical researchers!
We hope you’ve had a great weekend and we will see you on Monday!
