Walking through the gates of Killarney Elementary School students were transported to a new galaxy. Room transformations offered students the opportunity to have breakfast under the stars and be immersed in space galaxy motifs.
As part of the annual Rock Your School event, elementary students throughout the district engaged in space-themed lessons that took them to the moon and beyond.
Schools beamed in guest speakers to share their science related jobs with students. Bhavin Joshi, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University, “visited” Killarney ES to share what his job entails. He studies galaxies and how there is a mysterious force causing the universe to expand at a rapid pace. In addition to sharing this in student-friendly terms, he also answered an array of questions, from “What is a light year?” to “What other planets might humans be able to inhabit?”
Dressed in a NASA space suit, kindergarten teacher Adair Ziebarth exudes her passion for Rock Your School day and its purpose.
“It’s not just a party. We are including a lot of rigorous content as well. The main goal is to get kids excited their learning,” Ziebarth said. “I start with the content first. I look at what we are supposed to be teaching at this point, what are the students learning about, and then I look at ways to incorporate the theme into it.”
Waterford Elementary was also excited to join the Rock Your School event and have the Latinos in Action (LIA) from Discovery Middle school take part as well. John Guignet, a second grade teacher, transformed his classroom into a space galaxy and had the LIA students collaborate with the second graders on the phases of the moon. The students had alien names, completed STEM projects and integrated science into all other content areas. LIA students also partnered with Sandra Gomez’s first grade class, where they read about an astronaut and collaborated to answer text-dependent questions.
A collaborative group of program specialists and resource teachers created curriculum resource materials to align with each grade level’s scope and sequence. Students had fun while learning science, math and English language arts standards in a manner that was out of this world!
Check out this Wakelet to see the awesomeness . . .