Friday, March 09, 2007

Are the cookies done yet??




Mr. Nortz fifth grade science classes discussed home made solar ovens with Roweena Gerber from Miami Country Day School in Miami Florida. As part of a iEARN project students learned about alternative energy and how to make a solar oven out objects found around their home. Mrs. Gerber used a Solar Oven kit to show the process of solar cooking to the Avon students as well as some of the solar ovens created by her students. Once the students understood the concept they were charged with the task of creating their own ovens.

The students created designs of their ovens in science class and once approved the students began construction. The designs will be sent to a school in Australia for replication. Through a generous donation of Pizza Boxes by Cici’s pizza, the students brought in objects that they wanted to the boxes to create their own ovens. The classes will test their ovens locally on a sunny day to see how hot the ovens can reach and will follow up with another videoconference with students from Miami Country Day. The Avon students will present their ovens before they send the plans to Australia.

We hope to add photos of our ovens to our next post! We currently have 35 ovens created and look forward to testing them as soon as the sun & wind cooperates.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

North vs. South Virtual Spelling Bee



Miss Neushafer’s 5th grade class from Avon Heritage North took on the students from South Amherst Middle Schools in an exciting game on virtual spelling. The classes created were divided into teams of four. Each group gave the competing team a word from their spelling lists followed by the word in a sentence. Correct answers allowed the teams car to be moved on a game card created by the teams.


This fun activity was a unique activity was a fun review activity for both classes to enhance their curriculum. The students from both sites enjoyed the game and interacting with their partner site.

Monday, March 05, 2007

Students celebrate literacy with Michigan for Read Across The Planet


Mrs. Karasevic’s 3rd grade class met students from Mt. Morris Elementary School in Michigan. The students shared information about their state and community. The class from Mt Morris used the letters of Michigan to give us facts about their community and State. The students did a great job presenting over the system and had great facts.

Mrs. Karasevic’s class created a PowerPoint about the City of Avon that the students presented to class in Michigan. The students shared images of our city and how the city has changes over the years. Each student was assigned a slide to create and present to our partner class. This project provides the class the opportunity to meet social studies standards on communities and reading and presentation skills. The class followed the presentation with a Readers Theatre presentation on Appelemondo’s dream (a story from our reading book). The students did a great job reading the story to our partner class.

At the end the classes had the opportunity to ask questions our school and community. The classes enjoyed learning about each others schools and discovering how much the schools had in common.
This opportunity is part of the Read Across the Planet project managed by the TWICE Consortium in Michigan. To learn more about the Read Across the Planet project you can visit the project website at www.twice.cc/read/index.html