William R. Davie Elementary students were excited for the Scholastic Book Fair.  Clifford the Big Red Dog visited during curriculum night for photos with students.

Students have been learning about coding in media class. They did a variety of unplugged activities like making snowmen, moving characters around a map, building cup stacks, and folding paper airplanes to become familiar with the concepts of codes, algorithms and debugging. Next students moved to apps where they wrote codes with sequences, loops, and conditional statements to complete missions. More information about coding and links to online coding games can be found on the media center website.

Third graders have been engaged in activities aligned with the NC’s Common Core standards. To incorporate Black History Month, students learned about African-Americans and how they’ve impacted society, with much emphasis on the Underground Railroad. Third graders have been studying the solar system and its planets. They’ve read non-fiction articles and viewed videos on these planets. They incorporated the information they learned and completed a planet study along with a 3-D model to represent the planet. These models will be displayed in the school’s media center.

In math, third graders are learning properties and equations and will advance to fractions and how they are used to represent numbers. They continue to learn multiplication facts.

Earlier in the month, third graders were presented with dictionaries by Mike Hendrix. Mr. Hendrix works with the Mocksville Woman’s Club to provide means to purchase these dictionaries for students.

“Brian’s Winter” by Gary Paulson is the latest novel read by William R. Davie Elementary’s fifth grade AIG reading students. They read Hatchet by the same author earlier this year. Brian’s Winter explores an alternate ending to the Hatchet novel. Brian survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness and in the first book, he is rescued before the brutal winter season comes. In Brian’s Winter, Paulson writes a new ending that leaves Brian in the Canadian wilderness for the tough winter season. Students worked with partners and small groups reading the second novel. After completing it, they used Kagan strategies to form discussion groups using Chit-Chat cards. Students used the book to quote the author in stimulating conversations. Students completed research on survival situations and wrote reports using technology. In addition to the report, the students created a PowerPoint presentation. Survival topics included surviving on a deserted island, surviving in the extreme cold, and surviving in the desert. Each student presented his/her report and PowerPoint to the group. The novels the students are reading this year have a common characteristic of survival in different ways – including struggles for the main character being external and internal. Mrs. Bullins and Mrs. Oakes are excited to see the motivation and ambition of these students inside and outside of class.