Magnificent May Work

 Check out what SAIL has been doing this month.  

4th Grade ELA students finished their Lighthouse STEM unit by writing journal entries in the Day in the Life of a Lighthouse Keeper.  Here are some samples.

January 2, 1776, 5:07 PM

It looks like a storm is coming in, so it's a good thing I changed the lens two months ago. There's a good chance it'll be going on into the night, so I'll probably be up here for a while. It's harder to keep everything working because I cut my hand pretty badly a couple days ago fixing the gears. Anyways, I just finished making dinner for me and my daughter, Emily, and now she's drawing in her bedroom. She is eight years old.

5th graders in ELA are finishing their book groups.  Their books aligned with their study of the American Civil War.  

4th graders built tidal turbines as they learned about renewable energy.   

*Not pictured, AC, CH, CS, and NE.  

5th graders created their own Sirpenski's Triangle.  This geometric fractal is an example of how patterns repeat on different scales.  

 

5th Grade math students also defended their point of view on which part of the fraction has more power, the numerator or the denominator.  

Amazing April Work

The school year is flying by.  Here's what SAIL has been up to this month.  4th Grade ELA students wrote a lighthouse poem inspired by The Lighthouse by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  

4th Grade math students learned about how the Fresnel lens revolutionized the light of lighthouses.  Next month, students will learn about renewable energy involving tides.  Check back next month as we build a tidal turbine!

ELA 5th graders are exploring many topics.  Narragansett students are writing myths.  Great Falls students are reading Elijah of Buxton, a story about a boy who is the first child born into freedom in Buxton, Canada.  Village students finished their book study, A Mango Shaped Space, where a girl learns to appreciate her gift of synesthesia.  

5th-grade math students learned about coordinate planes, ordered pairs, the x-axis, and the y-axis.  They applied this knowledge to the game Battleship.

 

Magnificent March!

 5th graders finished their Food Truck units.  Students celebrated their Food Truck projects with friends.  They shared their business plans, took "food" orders, and added/subtracted decimals using money.  It was a fun way to have math come to life.  

 

5th Grade ELA students learned how to enrich their writing with alliteration.  We learned Amanda Gorman, a famous poet overcame her speech challenge by using alliteration.  Students discovered that speech teachers use alliteration to practice a particular sound that students struggle with.  The fifth grade made a connection between alliteration and tongue twisters.  They created a book Gorham elementary speech teachers could use.   

                                                        Mrs. Larochelle (Narragansett)

Mrs. Schlegel

(Village)

    

                                                                Mrs. Goodwich (Village)

                                                           Mrs. Miller (Great Falls)

                                

                                                            Mrs. Lamanna (Great Falls) 

4th Grade Math students discovered Shpero/Indie.  Maine schools received a grant to purchase these kits through "Expanding Access to Computer Science in Maine Classrooms."  Students explored how they worked and how computer science is connected to their lives.  

4th Grade ELA students analyzed a poem from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Lighthouse.  This aligns with the Maine History unit in their classrooms.  

5th Grade Food Truck Update

In the fall, Village School toured Mow's Munchies.  Mow's Munchies challenged Village students to create a new menu item.  They came up with different burger recipes and voted on... the Potato Tornado!  Check it out on Mow's 2023 summer menu!

Fabulous February

 4th-graders in math class designed and built mini-golf courses.  They learned math concepts like angles, lines, area, and perimeter.  They applied this to their golf courses.  They also looked at golf clubs and predicted how the angle of the club affected the placement of the golf ball. 

5th grade ELA students wrote mini-sagas for Young Writers.  The challenge was writing a min-saga about an ancient adventure in 100 words.  The word choice was crucial in writing a creative and captivating mini-saga.   Some students submitted their work in a contest.   

4th grade ELA students became playwrights!   They learned about play elements and wrote their own plays.  The plays ranged from a daring rescue of animals from a shelter to an evil villain who steals a valuable gem from the White House.  There were so many creative ideas!  Here are some pictures of the characters and their props.  They did a great job!  

Our 4th Grade math students in the fall learned about the Saco Heath.   We went on a "virtual" field trip.  They calculated hiking trail problems and how a heath differs from a bog.  Some students decided their final project would be to redesign a sign for the trail.  The Saco Heath Conservation was so happy with the posters, they recently posted them on their site.   

Some 5th-grade students are isolating their sense of touch with a tactile box as they continue to learn about synesthesia in their A Magno-Shaped Space book group.  

Hello 2023!

ASPIRE Gorham connected 4th grade ELA students with Mr. LeBlanc, a playwright.  Mr. LeBlanc shared his talents and expertise in person and via video.  Mr. LaBlanc shared his knowledge with us about playwriting, play elements, and tips on how to avoid writer's block.  The students can apply what they learned in their playwriting or future careers.

4th graders are working diligently on their mini-golf courses in math class.  They are learning about various angles, areas/perimeters, and types of lines.  Who knew how much math you could learn with mini-golf?!

One 5th grade book group is reading A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass.  In the story, protagonist Mia Winchell has a condition called synesthesia.  Students tried to integrate their senses by painting what music would look like in their minds if they had synesthesia.  Can you tell what painting was created during scary, relaxing, or upbeat music?

5th graders are designing and building their Food Trucks in math class.  They have learned how to create business plans.