2021 5th Grade Battle of the Books

A team of 5th graders have been reading extra hours the past few months.  Each year the AEA hosts a State-wide Battle of the Books.  This year the event took place virtually using Zoom, with the aid of Google Forms and a website called Kahoot.  The event, even though it was held at each school felt much like the regular competitions held in the past.  The group of students had 21 book titles from the Iowa Children's Choice list to read, enjoy and take note of important events the characters came across in each story.  The first round of questioning for the near 40 teams across the state included 60 questions.  The team from West Elementary finished 8th place after this round advancing them to the championship round of 10 schools.  In this round the students answered 25 questions from the book "Sled Dog School", written by Terry Lynn Johnson.  This was extra special as Terry Lynn Johnson was the guest speaker all the way from Canada via Zoom.  Students were able to interact with the author and learn what it takes to be a professional writer.  

The final round took place using Kahoot, which gives teams more points for answering quickly.  The team worked smoothly through the 25 questions and ended up with a 3rd place finish.  We are very proud of their extra effort in this competition and representing the 

Independence Community Schools.  

Thank you, and CONGRATULATIONS Grace, Isla, Keira, Landon, McKenna and Myra!

Working together on the first part of the test

3rd Place

High School Future Problem Solving

 Juniors Lily, Laura, Lauren and Ashlyn all competed in the regional Future Problem Solving Bowl.  "Students apply problem solving skills they have been refining all year long at the annual Affiliate Bowl. This competition brings together the best and brightest FPSers within an Affiliate. Students that demonstrated their knowledge and understanding of the problem solving process in previous rounds of competition are invited to the Affiliate Finals." - Iowa Future Problem Solvers

This unique competition takes two hours to complete, which includes brainstorming with each other and multiple writing tasks.  The group scored enough points to qualify for the State Future Problem Solving competition which will be held later this week.  Congrats to these young ladies on their accomplishment!

Another feat these four accomplished was giving up their CELL PHONES for two hours during the competition!

Dissection at its Finest

 Two 7th grade girls with interest in the medical field began a dissection project.  This opportunity will hopefully shed some light on the organs and systems of different creatures.  The students are working on this during their 7th Grade ELP class in the 3rd quarter.  So far they have been amazed of how well they can pick out and identify the parts of a crayfish and perch.

7th Graders Begin ELP Course

The 3rd Quarter marked the first time 7th Graders were able to take an ELP course here at the Independence Junior Senior High. The class meets every day during the 3rd Quarter in place of an exploratory class.  Students will work on projects using the Project Based Learning model, allowing students to choose topics that relate to them well or have a high interest in.  They create a project proposal including skills/topics they want to learn more about.  They propose questions and center their activities around finding answers and solutions.
 

Robots with Sensors

 

Using an ultra-sonic sensor, 5th graders were able to program small LEGO creations to search out and collect items.  Programming this one particular task took many hours, however perseverance paid off!

Math Challenge

The Winter Noetic Math Challenge was a big hit with students here at West Elementary.  Students worked very hard learning and using strategies to solve problems.  Landon and Zach scored in the top 10% of the country and earned some medals for their achievements.  Great job to all students on this difficult challenge!

Paper Rockets

Sixth grade students have been studying and engineering paper rockets lately.  They came up with dozens of ideas of what they thought was going to be the perfect rocket.  Fun was had all through the learning process, although many failures were hit along the way.  Just a couple designs and journaling/data recording can be seen below.

Everyone loves a MATH Challenge!

 ELP students have have been learning many new things as they explore challenge problems each week.  As the students work through the challenges they are often learning math curriculum that is 2 or more years above their current grade.  This allows them a constant new challenge in the world of math, as well as keeping their current math benchmarks sharp.  

Some problems remain too difficult for students, so teamwork, or partner work is utilized to find the correct answers.