Gualala Art Center Student Art Show
Last week, all students attended the Gualala Art Center to view their art on display. It was a proud moment for everyone to see their creativity featured in a real gallery! One of our third-grade students was awarded a sale- which is a great accomplishment! Many of our students also completed and exhibited their “Arpilleras”- colorful fabric art pieces inspired by Latin American storytelling traditions. They turned out beautiful and powerful, full of detail and meaning.
Project-Based Learning “Geo-City Fiesta: Math Meets Español”
Our students have been working hard on their 3D Geo Cities models as part of our PBL (Project-Based Learning). Each group has been working on a city from a Spanish-speaking country and brought it to life using recycled materials and their imagination. Through this project, they’ve explored geography, culture, and city planning in a fun and creative way. These beautiful models will be presented during our student-led conferences this Friday. We’re excited for families to see the effort, teamwork, and pride students put into representing their cities. ¡No se lo pierdan!
In ELA and Social Studies, students are continuing with the daily Free-Write Expedition along with grammar, writing genres, sentence structure, text analysis, and inspirational comprehension. Students spent time Tuesday working with Blake More, PA city Poet Laureate, exploring the art of poetry and inspired writing. We began our beloved ‘book arts’ section where we will study the Gutenberg press and the history of print. Students will be creating their own books to use for poetry and other creations. In social studies, students re-visited the history of one of our greatest civil rights activists, Cesar Chavez, who forever changed the working conditions and work unions in California and the world through nonviolent activism. Additionally, students are studying the conflicts and the desire for independence that led to the Revolutionary War. Kids are creating flip books: ‘The Road to War-Visualizing the American Revolution’. Students have spent time working on nature journaling for science. This included lessons in ‘learning to look’ and ‘scientific illustration’ and created a flip book of their progress.
In Ms. Amee’s/Ms. Isidora’s Tk-2 dual language classes
Students begin their days with the Morning Routine in Spanish and yoga! Students also practice calendar time, weather, attendance, and spatial positions like up, down, inside, and next to — all in Spanish!
We launched a new project approach with student teams who created their own flags and team cheers, which they presented to classmates! We also developed a points system based on a rubric with key indicators: respect, cleanliness, participation, and project-specific goals. We are excited about this structure which supports both academic and social-emotional skills through fun and collaboration.
Students also started using IXL on the computer to practice numbers from 0–30 in Spanish, with everyone working on the same lesson together. Students encouraged and supported each other to reach 100 points, discovering that we have some amazing motivational coaches in our class! This activity strengthened social skills like cooperation, empathy, and celebrating each other's successes. In addition to building logical-mathematical thinking, we are also working on writing skills, as students begin to express and explain their thinking in Spanish.
