Beyond The Desk

As it was a short week, we didn’t get to hear much from this amazing group. However, it was a group I really wanted to highlight especially since my choir had sung one of their songs a couple of years ago, which was what introduced me to this group.

The group is called Rajaton and they are an a capella group from Sweden. They are absolutely amazing and we talked a little bit this week about how hard it is to sing a capella because of how difficult it is to stay in tune without any instruments playing with you. The singers have to sing in perfect harmony, in the correct key and make beautiful music without the help of any instruments. I think the students enjoyed the group and appreciated their talents. Here is the song my choir sang, done much better by Rajaton.

And here is one for Mr. Neudorf, who I hear enjoys this song.

We are well into our Science unit on Habitats and Communities. We have been doing a lot of learning and having a lot of fun talking about animals and all the different habitats around the world. We have been focusing on the main habitats including:

• deserts
• rainforests
• forests
• oceans
• arctic tundra

We are just now finishing off a major projects where groups of students each worked on researching and creating a poster about a specific habitat. Following that, students research an animal that lived in that habitat and created a snapshot of that animal with information about the animal. This snapshot will be added to the poster. The posters look wonderful and I will take pictures to add to the blog shortly. Our next adventure will be to learn about food chains and food webs. We will then have students creating their own habitats, which is always fun to watch.
Once we are done learning about food webs and food chains, students will be having a mid-unit test. Study notes will be put on the blog to help students prepare.

Yesterday, we watched a Bill Nye video on wetlands. The wetlands are an unique habitat that we didn’t get a chance to study. So, instead, I thought we would watch Bill Nye. It’s been awhile since Bill Nye was on TV but his videos are still great and lots of fun to watch while being educational.

And just because I love Bill Nye so much, here’s another one on space and the recent exploration of Jupiter.