CCSD Cool School News

NELC (main photo above): Octavia Merritt’s class tasted the rainbow last week to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as students tasted different fruits. Students explored their taste buds to understand that not everyone likes the same foods. Some may enjoy something, while others may not be crazy about it. The class discussed how healthy fruit is for their bodies and noted the different colors. It was a great way to learn and have a tasty treat from Mr. Leprechaun, who they almost trapped, but he got away. 

CCHS (above): School to Careers Coordinator Sue Segura took a group of freshmen students to participate in Nevada Bound at the University of Nevada, Reno. Students visited and explored many career and college pathways and got a little taste of college life. In addition to touring different pathways available at the college, students got to eat free in the student cafeteria and tour the dorm rooms. They were all very impressed and did not realize what UNR had to offer. “The university was informative. It was interesting to see what it is like on campus, and the food was great,” student Hadley Frey said.

CCMS (left): Rebecca Hatch set up a makeshift camping lab to teach her 6th-grade class about physical and chemical changes in matter. Students cut pieces of celery to make a whole celery stick into smaller bite-size pieces. To visually understand chemical change, students mixed sugar, water, and lemonade to watch the sugar dissolve into the water. A hands-on learning activity that helped students further their understanding of the changes in matter. 

Numa (right): Students in Vanessa Burch-Urquhart’s class raised rainbow trout from an egg to fry with the Trout in the Classroom program organized through the Nevada Department of Wildlife. Students learned about the fish’s life cycle, habitat, adaptations, and conservation. One of the class targets is knowing how internal and external structures help plants and animals survive, grow, behave, and reproduce. Learning about a local species at the fish hatchery helps gain knowledge about science in Nevada. Releasing the fish into the wild is always bittersweet, but the students enjoyed learning about the whole process at the Mason Valley Fish Hatchery.

ECB (right): Students in Stacy Stults' third-grade class chose an influential person to learn about. They researched, took notes, and then wrote a report on their chosen person. Each student then taught their classmates about their person by presenting their report to the class. With only three months left of school, students are working hard to transition from learning to read to reading to learn. Henry Ford, Cady Stanton, Jackie Robinson, Amelia Earhart, Neild Armstrong, Rosa Parks, the Wright brothers, and Harriet Tubman were among a few of the influential people students chose to highlight for this class project. 

LES (below): Lahontan Elementary School held a Light up the Night Family Event featuring literacy and math activities that glowed throughout the school. The event was in conjunction with the spring book fair. Teachers partnered together and provided glow-in-dark activities for families to enjoy. Games included glow subtraction bowling, glow read and write the room, glow race to fill the cup, glow counting with pipe cleaners and beads, glow sensory writing in rice, glow Tic-Tac-Toe, glow hopscotch, glow-write to 100, and glow-write through the alphabet. Families had passports stamped when they attended each activity. Once they completed five, students earned a finger flashlight they could use at home to read their newly purchased books from the book fair.