Book Club Celebration of learning

 Podcast interviews FIELD TRIP

COFFEE AND CHOCOLATE FIELD TRIP

A few pictures from our trip to Coffee By Design and Haven's Candies. Our students learned about the ways that these local businesses are impacted by global trade and/or climate change. 

Getting started with podcasting

Students got to practice their interview skills with the Mr. Huntington and the microphones purchased by the tech department. Students are getting ready to head into the field, this week and next to conduct interviews for the audio stories they're working on in Project Time.

March Snapshots

A few pictures of learning taking place in and around our classrooms. Students experimenting with the density of different temperature water, reading for their book clubs and completing their Women's History Month slideshow.

Weather Field Trip

Students learned about the National Weather Service's role in predicting local conditions and keeping the public safe in dangerous weather conditions. Students learned about the tools scientists use to observe the weather from simple rulers to weather balloons and complex computer models. Afterwards we ventured across the street to the Pineland Farms Market where we enjoyed a tasty lunch with an emphasis on local foods.

Shocking science demos!

Students on the Kaufman/Kerr team, combined with the Moniz/Filieo science classes for a demonstration of how static electricity works using a Van de Graaff generator.

Climate and Commerce unit kickoff

We got the whole team together to kick off our unit on climate and commerce. Students created a slideshow with the overarching theme of "Movement of Ideas, Goods and People". We followed this up with a game similar to telephone where students drew pictures based off a ever changing sentence. Hard to describe -ask your student!

Making circuits

Students created simple circuits using batteries, wire, light bulbs and switches as part of our study of electric and magnetic force.

It's electric!

Publication party!

On Thursday we celebrated the creation of our Novel-in-Verse minibooks with a publication party. Students actually did read to each other in between stuffing their mouths with goodies!

Creating electromagnets

We have started a mini unit on Electric and Magnetic forces. Students worked on making their own electromagnets using copper wire and 6volt batteries. There was a lot of trial and error involved in the learning process.

Gulf of Maine unit Celebration of learning

We are so proud of all our students for the projects they presented at our first Celebration of Learning. The projects included hot sauce and salsa, salt scrub and sea salt. Students created plastic from algae and imagined new restaurants, candle companies, key chains and snacks. They demonstrated their learning through slideshows, videos, prototypes and websites. Each project had a deep and meaningful connection to the resources in the Gulf of Maine. Please enjoy a few pictures of the event. 

Crab Survey at Kettle Cove

The entire 7th grade descended on Kettle Cove for a citizen science survey of crab species at Kettle Cove. This was part of our study of the Gulf of Maine ecosystems. 

Guest Speakers!

We've been very lucky to have Sarah Plummer working with us on this Gulf of Maine unit. She has organized a couple of panels for our students to access community members with experience in aquaculture and fisheries related work. 

One panel featured our own CEHS high school students who came to talk about their past and current projects harvesting lobsters, creating fertilizer from seaweed and making bioplastic also from seaweed. 

Our second panel this week brought in Sophie Scott from the Gulf of Maine Research Laboratory, Zoe Croft from Atlantic Sea Farms, Mitchell Lench from Ocean's Balance and Raunni Kew from Inn by the Sea. These business people and entrepreneurs talked with our students about the importance of environmental stewardship and sustainability in their business models.

Portland's working waterfront

This week's field trip brought us to the Portland waterfront, where waterfront coordinator Bill Needleman took us on a tour down the fish pier, through the fish exchange and over to Merrill's Wharf where we met up with lobsterman (and team parent) Thom Werner. We continued our walk down Commercial street and around the Eastern Prom where we enjoyed a yummy lunch from the local food trucks. It was a wonderful day!

Photosynthesis with legos

Students created a model of photosynthesis by putting together lego molecules and then recombining them to mimic the process of making glucose using carbon dioxide and water.

Kettle Cove Field Trip

Our first project-based unit is on the Gulf of Maine -what better place to kick it off than at our own Kettle Cove. We managed to sneak in a beautiful day in an otherwise rainy week. At Kettle Cove students made connections to the 5 themes of geography, collected and identified seaweed and completed a scavenger hunt. 

Week One!

This week was a good lesson in perseverance and positivity for our Kaufman/Kerr students. CEMS was not an easy place for learning this week in the heat and humidity. We are really proud of the way everyone was engaged in the team building and introductory activities we did this week. Please enjoy some pictures from our team Norms Building activity in which students had to create games and define the rules before applying those rules to our classroom community. In Mr. Kerr's math class students worked collaboratively on vertical white boards to solve problems and complete logic puzzles. During project time we also did a building challenge using pipe cleaners.