Dearest PCS Families,

I hope everyone is coming out of the deep freeze and was able to enjoy the warmer temperatures this weekend. Hopefully the worst of the winter weather is behind us, and we can look forward to Spring and more sunshine soon!

Project Based Learning (PBL) will continue to be my focus for the next few newsletters. This week we are highlighting a Kindergarten project from Mrs. Smyth’s class!

Rain or Shine!

In our most recent Kindergarten PBL unit, we have been studying weather and learning about teen numbers. The students were asked to create something that would help people traveling to St. Louis learn about our weather and seasons so that they can be prepared. The students composed some questions that they needed to know before getting started on this project and they even got to zoom with a real meteorologist to help them learn more!

Through their play and exploration, they had the ability to learn more about weather and teen numbers. They explored areas that interested them most, like hail and clouds, tracked the weather daily to support counting and comparing, created beautiful pictures of various types of weather in St. Louis, read books about weather AND volcanoes (and made the self discovery that volcano disasters and weather are not a worry for St. Louis), they practiced counting how long a tornado in a bottle lasts and tracked the teen number, and they even made their own little mini books about weather!

After they learned all that was needed in order to complete this project, they worked together to decide on what should be included in their report. They made a plan, told me about what materials they would need, and we got busy! Many students wanted to be meteorologists themselves and needed a green screen and a clicker, while other students wanted to create posters or books for their project. We even had a student that centered her whole project around dogs, since the weather can affect them too!

Because this learning was so open ended and flexible for student voice, choice and interest, they showed daily engagement and really got to flourish with their creativity. Head over to @mrs.smyth_pcs on Instagram to see more pictures and their final projects that will be posted soon!

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As I stated last week, if you would like to take a deeper dive into understanding PBL, please reach out and I can point you to some additional resources. It is amazing what can come from this type of learning with young children!

Warmly,

Dana

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Attention PCS Families:

You are invited to participate in a Virtual Learner forum. The purpose of this forum is to gather

information about the experiences of students and families who participate in virtual learning.

We will be asking about what is going well, what areas can be improved, and the effectiveness

of some of our online systems. This meeting will occur on Monday February 22, 2021 from

4:00pm-5:00pm.

If you are interested in attending or have any questions, please email Tyson Strickler at

tstrickler@premiercharterschool.org to get the Zoom link.

Follet Books E-Fair coming soon!

The PCS Library is helping to support student reading by offering an online Follett Book Fair from March 1st to March 15th. Every purchase made will benefit our school! Follett Book Fairs offer more profits for our school, free shipping on any purchase (delivered to the school), and have a larger selection of award-winning and popular titles.

The Book Fair will coincide with “Read Across America” on March 2nd. Look out for reading challenges and activities to celebrate in the next week!

Everyone is welcome to participate! Simply visit our online fair page to purchase books for your child, yourself, school or help build classroom libraries. Once our online fair has ended, all books will be shipped to the school for pick up after Spring Break.

Would you like to support a child who may not be able to participate? We encourage you to purchase a gift card which can be emailed to vramsey@premiercharterschool.org. We will then use your donated gift card to help a child in our school community.