Worlds Of Wonders Expedition

Essential Question of the Week: What are the wonders of Ancient Greece?

In our expedition art projects, students have completed and mounted a piece of weaving and are about to embark on a metalworking project. Both processes have connections to the ancient arts in India. Weaving for clothing, like traditional saris, has been a family tradition in India for over 2000 years and was the second-most common profession after farming. Metalworking was quite common in India as evidenced through the artifacts we have uncovered. Copper swords, iron door décor, as well as iron knives, bowls, and eating utensils have been found dating back to 600 BCE—200 BCE.

We begin investigating life in ancient Greece this week. As part of their learning activities, students are preparing two Greek festivals – one in Athens and one in Sparta. They will take place at school on Friday, May 4th. Each city-state will share their foods, music and games.

Also exciting – local actress and script-writer, Sarah Poynter, has joined us as a consultant to help us create and polish our final performance! She is an experienced performer with many film, commercial and stage credits in her background and we are so fortunate to have her! Miss Sarah will be working with crew during expedition time each week and has already contributed some wonderful ideas.

Fieldwork at the “King Tut ‘Wonderful Things’ from Pharaoh’s Tomb” at the Wilbur D. May Museum in Reno was a fantastic opportunity for crew to connect their classroom learning to the exhibit. Crew collected new information and sketches in field journals for use in their long-term ancient civilization projects. Thank you again to all our parent drivers!

Math

Our crew mastered ratios and ratio word problems beautifully and began the statistics unit with a review of mean, median, and mode. Adding range, categorical and numerical data and outliers to their math vocabulary, students began interpreting graphs. We are also exploring the uses of new types of graphs: Coordinate graphs, and Stem and Leaf plots. Students will now begin interacting with data through a statistics project of their choosing and we are looking forward to seeing some of their interesting teaching videos! They are also warming up for STAR testing with a practice page per night until test day.


IMPORTANT DATES:

May 4 Statistics Unit due

May 4 Ancient Greece Case study completed

May 8 -9 -10 S.T.A.R. testing week