Message from the Principal________________________
May 4, 2009
Dear Parents/Guardians:
The March and April curriculum provided educational and engaging lessons as well as on-going opportunities to address IEP goals. The topics for the March unit included weather patterns, and a celebration of women in history. The themes and topics for April focused on horticulture, insects, and poetry.
During March, students created weather stations using them to conduct various experiments, as well as observe weather patterns. They also studied famous women in history. Throughout April’s unit, students participated in interdisciplinary activities that included chances to plant, observe plant growth and track the life cycle of insects.
During the week of April 20th, 233Q held its Annual Best Practice Fair. The Best Practice fair celebrated student accomplishments across the 2008-2009 school year. For the event, each site selected and displayed culminating projects to reflect past units. The exhibits integrated student generated work and photos showing the process needed to complete each project on display.
At the conclusion of the 233Q Best Practice Fair, some of the displays were taken to the District 75 Best Practice Fair held at 811X on April 25, 2009. Projects taken to the District Fair included a 3-D scene of the Titanic [CTEA]; an interactive display to celebrate the African American influence on past and modern day music[875]; replicas of Egyptian artifacts [CTEA]; a metallic replica of Madam Currie [875]; an interactive fable[CTEA]; Helen Keller puppet made of recycled materials to support our ‘Go Green’ effort [827]; student made books, adapted books from IS 25, JHS 226, and BCHS, tri-folds boards displaying various projects from all sites and “Our Year in Review” scrapbooks from several 233Q classes.
The school’s May theme is “Project Ocean: Ocean Pollution and Solutions!” This unit is designed to encourage student interdependence, problem-solving, self assessment, community awareness, global thinking and project evaluation. As part of the month long unit, students will explore facts on the ocean and its inhabitants. In keeping with our ‘Going Green’ effort students will decide on an environmental topic linked to protecting the ocean and its inhabitants. By the end of the unit, students will recognize how the ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems and how the ocean and humans are inextricably linked.