The third quarter of the 2014-15 school year is behind us and with that Horizon Science Academy took some time to recognize students who demonstrated outstanding achievement in academics, character, and citizenship. The following students from third grade were recognized at the third quarter awards assembly in March.
Merit Roll
Merit roll is achieved when a student earns an overall GPA between 3.0 and 3.49. The following third graders achieved the Merit Roll for the first quarter of this school year:
Abubakr, Khadijah, Jayda, Ray'Von
Honor Roll
Honor Roll is achieved when a student earns a GPA between 3.5 and 3.99. When placed on the Honor Roll, students receive a McDonald's gift card in addition to their certificate. The following students achieved Honor Roll during the first quarter:
James, Da'Marieon, Angel, Kaylin, Cayla
Super Honor Roll
Super Honor Roll is achieved when a student obtains a GPA of a perfect 4.0, (No students earned this during the third quarter but we are optimistic that we will have several earn it during the fourth quarter).
Special Honors and Awards
Highest Average in Science
Kaylin
Highest Average in Social Studies
Da'Marieon, Khadijah, Kaylin, (Diamond, not pictured)
This year, HSA-DE participated in the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Pennies for Patients Campaign. Since 1994, millions of dollars have been raised in pennies and other spare change by more than 10 million elementary, middle and high school students throughout the country. The funds, collected during a three-week period, benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Everyone who participates is a winner!
At HSA-DE, we raised money by collecting spare change in our classrooms. We also held special event days including "Jersey and Jeans Day" and "Crazy Hat Day". We also held candy sales throughout the campaign with all proceeds going to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
However, the highlight of the campaign was the Stuck for a Buck fundraiser where students could pay $1 to purchase a piece of duct tape which would then be used to tape our beloved Mr. Gonzalez, our Title 1 Math teacher, to the wall of our school cafeteria. Stuck for a Buck was an overwhelming success and students and staff, alike, enjoyed this spirited pep rally. Once the money was all counted, students at HSA-DE had raised $943.97! WAY to GO, Horizon Hawks!
Cayla, Shy'Diamond, Khadijah, and Kaylin get ready to place their tape.
Mr. Gonzalez is wondering why the students seem so eager
to tape him to the wall.
Throughout March, students at Horizon Science Academy- Dayton Elementary will be enjoying special guest readers as part of a month-long reading extravaganza in honor of National Right to Read.
Guest readers planned included members of the Dayton Demonz Hockey team, Jim Bucher- TV Guy, Buckeyman and Jim Tressel Look-alike, and members of the Victoria Theater. The month-long event is designed to highlight the importance of teaching strong reading skills and the value of reading to children. Students will spend the month reading a variety of books that touch upon different aspects of their curriculum with a special focus on author studies. The month will culminate in a special Dr. Seuss event to celebrate the birthday of one of this most loved authors of children's books.
Today, HSA-DE was visited by Larry Buckeyeman Lokai and a Jim Tressel look-alike. Buckeyeman and Jim read Buckeyes A-Z by Mark Walter to students throughout the building. Each student was presented a gift of a genuine buckeye along with a card explaining what a buckeye was. Each teacher was presented an OSU Buckeye necklace. We were very excited to host these very special visitors to our building and the students listed very intently to learn more about the OSU Buckeyes than they had ever known before.
Here are just a few photos from our special day...
The most EPIC Pi Day of the century was today, 3.14.15, and at 9:26:53, seven dedicated third graders from Horizon Science Academy-Dayton Elementary attended Saturday School in room 177 to help give them a fun boost to their education as we move into the Spring.
Saturday School is designed to be even more hands on and experiential than what occurs in the classroom through the week. Often, we have a theme to our learning and today was one such day. Today's them was Pi and Pie!
We began our lesson with an introduction to the book Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi, A Math Adventure by Cindy Neuschwander.
Students were given dry erase boards and markers on which they were asked to record math terms that they heard as the story was read aloud.
Da'Marieon creates his list of math terms.
Once we reached page 17, the story was paused and students were shown a demonstration of the concepts the characters in the story discovered. . . The realization that the circumference of a circle is slightly more than 3 times the diameter of the circle. It is actually 3 1/7 diameters, or 3.141592653. . . We took yarn and measured across the diameter, cutting that length. Then, we cut yarn the length of the circumference. We observed that, indeed, the circumference of the circle is just over 3 times the diameter.
After we listened to the remainder of the story, we related what we learned to our recent study of fractions. To do this, Students were distributed a set of construction paper circles representing pies. We discussed what kinds of pies each color of paper could represent. Students generated the following ideas:
BROWN: chocolate cream, pecan, pumpkin, turkey pot pie, chicken pot pie
YELLOW: lemon, banana, coconut cream, sugar cream, apple
ORANGE: peach, pumpkin
BLUE: blueberry, blackberry
RED: strawberry, cherry, strawberry rhubarb, red raspberry
Students were instructed to choose one "pie" that is their favorite. Once that was done, These "pies" were folded in half. We noted that when folding in half, we were folding on the diameter of the "pie". Next, students cut the pie on the fold, so that they now had two halves. We reviewed that each part of their pie was 1/2 and we called that a unit fraction. A unit fraction is a fraction whose numerator is 1.
Next, students traded 1/2, or one unit, of their pie to a friend. We identified parts of our pie by stating, "One-half of my pie is orange," and so on.
After this, we repeated the above procedure, cutting each half in half so that now we had four pieces. Again, we identified that we still had a unit fraction but now, our unit fraction was 1/4.
Diamond cuts her pie pieces into one-fourths.
Students traded a 1/4 piece of their pie to a friend and then returned to their desks. After putting their pies back together as a whole, they stated fractions about their pie. For example, "Three-fourths of my pie is red and 1/4 of my pie is yellow." We noted that 3/4 is NOT a unit fraction.
Finally, we repeated the cut and trade procedure a third time so that we now had a pie cut into 1/8 pieces. After we discussed our pies and compared our pies to each others, we glued our pies onto paper and recorded fractions identifying the portion of our pies that each color made.
Khadijah has her pie glued on paper and is writing fractions about her pie.
Before moving on to our next lesson segment, we took a moment to sing a special Pi Day song:
Following this activity, we read an informational text book, Pi Day by Nora Miller (Reading A-Z). Students practiced their oral reading fluency while learning that congress voted to make March 14 National Pi Day in the hopes that students would discover that they really do like math and science. We learned that people celebrate Pi Day by eating pie (of course!), both traditional pie and pizza pie, drinking Pi-neapple juice, doing math and science activities, singing songs, and having Pi Day 5Ks.
We were VERY excited this year at Horizon Science Academy-Dayton Elementary to be able to celebrate Pi Day in nearly ALL of those special ways. Immediately following Saturday School, students, staff and families of both students and staff gathered to run or walk our very own Pi Day 5K.
We had a wonderful turnout for this event and the rain dried up just in time as the sun came out to shine down upon us for this special event. Along with many others, 6 third graders laced up their running shoes and we took to Sinclair Park clad in our lime green Pi Day 5K shirts.
Khadijah, Alivia, Abubakr, Angel, Da'Marieon, and Cayla gathered together pre-race.
Along the way, we had MANY laughs and made lots of memories. The third graders are quite a group of characters and the 5K racers were in peak form today!
Abubakr brought up the rear most of the race only to gain
a "sudden flash of energy" 10 feet from the finish line as he
flew by Ms. A (who had planned to wait on him so we'd cross
it together)...I think he must have heard the theme song from
Chariot's of Fire at the end...nah...he just wanted to dog his
teacher...LOL!
Cayla represented third grade and the girls by finishing
FIRST girl and FOURTH overall.
And here comes Da'Marieon...apparently he got hot running since he took off his
race shirt...as he past me, he said, "Here Ms. A. Hold this. I gotta finish this race!"
Glad I can help, D. =)
Angel runs back to meet Abubakr, Khadijah (who joined me on my final lap)
and me as we approached the finish line.
Once we arrived back at school. Every received participation certificates and trophies were given to the first, second, and third place finishers. Then we enjoyed pizza pie and pie. It really was a great day and certainly one of my most memorable and enjoyable with my students.
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