Students in Mrs. Lestitian's 6th grade social studies classes created irrigation systems as part of their unit on Mesopotamia. After learning how ancient people designed and created a complex system to divert water from the rivers to support agriculture, students were tasked with creating the most effective irrigation system using limited materials. Each group was empowered to think like engineers in order to sketch and build their models. The goal was for them to get the most water from the starting reservoir to two different basins at the bottom. 

The House on the Canal: The Story of the House That Hid Anne Frank

written by Thomas Harding ; illustrated by Britta Teckentrup.

In the middle of Amsterdam is a house on a canal with a green door. Over four hundred years, it has quietly witnessed love, desperation, and historic change. Sometimes the narrow house was splendidly decorated, humming with life and love; other times, it stood empty, in near ruins. Sometimes the green door was open and inviting; other times, it was closed against cold and plague or to conceal the victims of wartime persecution. The house's last occupant, a young girl with a sweet smile, would famously document her time there. In her diary, Anne Frank wrote of "the old house on the canal," and today people come from far and wide to visit what stands as a universal symbol of hope and resilience.