Wednesday, January 27, 2016

The Great Garbage Audit 2016


written by Kerrigan, Maria and Owen

On Friday, Becky & Jen came to our school to work with us.  They helped us do a garbage audit.  We went to a tarp that had special name tags with jobs on them like organic (compost), landfill, reduce, reuse, drink containers and paper.  We picked our jobs!  Recycling had to use two bags because it had so much recycling!  We started with 13 bags of garbage, recycling and compost (one from each class!)  We sorted it into different categories.  There was alot of compost!!!  Some of it was disgusting!

We are trying to make good choices....so for reducing you could buy one big bag of crackers or taco chips and put them in individual snack containers for lunch.  You could do the same with yogurt. 

We used a scale at the end to weight the bags.  We were surprised with the numbers! 

At the end, the landfill tarp had only two kitchen bags of garbage and they were only half full.  We made good choices by not putting too many things in the landfill!  It's important to compost, reduce, reuse and recycle to keep our garbage level low!  We have to work together to do great things for our Earth!



Information about the Great Garbage Audit
by Mrs. Chapnick

The Set-up:
 
Garbage, recycling and compost was collected for a 24 hour period here at SSES and then taken into the gym to be sorted and weighed.
 
The Process:
 
The class was divided into groups where each student had a role. They were either the compost, landfill, reduce, recycling- paper products, recycling- beverage containers or reuse collectors. Garbage bags were emptied out onto tarps and the collectors went to work. The rubber gloves were appreciated! Once sorted, all of the collections were weighed.
 
Results:
 
Compost: 15.17kg (food scraps, buns-from soup day)
Recycling-Paper products: 14.77kg (paper sheets and scraps, cardboard, newspapers, magazines)
Recycling- Beverage containers: 12.21kg (rinsed and shaken out milk cartons, juice boxes)
Reuse: .70kg (sandwich plastic bags, plastic cutlery, popsicle sticks)
Reduce: .58kg (wrappers for food, cookies, granola bars, yogurt tubes, glue sticks)
Landfill: 2.55kg (straws, tops of food containers, Kleenex and paper towels)
 
What we learned:
 
SSES is doing a very good job of composting and recycling. We can do even better though! 
We need to Rethink!

How can we reduce our waste?
 
1-      We can use washable containers, buy in bulk and send food in reusable containers.
2-      Take uneaten food home again.
3-      Put lunch scraps in the compost pail (no meat or dairy), not the garbage can.
 
An audit will be performed again in the Spring. Let’s see if we can improve our numbers. 
We only have one Earth! 
Let us all do our part.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

January discoveries at SSES


Our student bloggers shared a little bit about what's happening at SSES in January!

Kindergarten ~ Mrs. Mill's
written by Tori

We built a big tower out of wood blocks.  We planted some seeds, maybe they'll be flowers.  We are researching tornadoes!  We run around and play games in Gym.  We are getting ready for the STEAM Fair!

Kindergarten ~ Ms. Lewis
written by Kelsey

We go to Gym and have so much fun.  We play instruments in Music and we make songs.  We made a rocket ship out of cardboard.  We're making shiny rocks and some crystals in jars.  We have numbers that we use when we're counting.

Mr. Welch's Grade 1&2
written by Sarah

We are reading Fairy Tales.  Linden and I are building the Northern Woodlands!  We are doing adding and subtracting.  We like writing stories in our class.

Mrs. Torcia's Grade 1&2
written by Jack

We are building a race track and racing cars.  We might make our own cars.  We have a new puppet theater and we are adding can tabs for Math.  I got my tooth pulled out.  We are exploring how to keep our teeth healthy.  We used the Zoomy to look at it.  We are also wondering if foods have good sugars and bad sugars.

Ms. Elsworth and Mrs. Mager's Grade 1&2
written by Ty

Raymond and I are building a castle using wood blocks and loose parts.  We sketch our designs!  We read so many books in the morning!  We are doing Math Frenzy, too.  We used to do plus, but now we are doing minus!

Mrs. Michaluk's Grade 1&2
written by Tanner

The book order came in today....it was our holiday gift.  We love to read so much in our class, we were so excited to get new books!  We are doing lots of coding in our class.  We have a robot named Dash in our class that we can code.  We are doing a lot of Math in our class...we like to be challenged!  We are also writing a story about Dash together!

Mrs. Gibson's Grade 1&2
written by Arika

In my class, we are making cars for STEAM Fair.  We get to work in groups.  I'm with Myla and Keira.  My car is already finished!  We used recyclables to make our cars.

Mrs. Poloski's Grade 3&4
written by Ben

Our classroom is bringing stuff from all around the world for sharing.  We are tweeting about it.  We are putting it on the world map with tacks to show where everything is from.

Mrs. Casper's Grade 3&4
written by Amaris

In our classroom, we are working on our STEAM Fair projects.  Some of us are doing crystals, planets, volcanoes and lots more.  We are also researching and making habitats.  A favorite book in our classroom is Abby Cornelia's One and Only Magical Power.  We are also using charcoal pencils to create art with our high school helper, Emma.

Ms. Shamanski's Grade 3&4
written by Rylan

Our class is getting ready for the STEAM Fair.  Some of us are doing our explorations and research on animals for STEAM Fair.  We are working in our special Reading Journals everyday.  We write about the problem, solution and the beginning, middle & end.  Sometimes we write about the author's message like when they teach you where to put commas and how to use punctuation.  The author is trying to help you write and put capitals where you are supposed to.  In Music, we are playing our recorders and earning our karate belts!  I am on my bronze belt and I can't wait to earn it next Music class!

Mrs. Magnusson's Grade 3&4
written by Sophie

Our class is working on our STEAM Fair projects.  Some students are making rock candy, glowing water, slime, stop motion videos and more!  Everyone is making a backboard.  I can't wait until STEAM Fair!!!  For Math, we have Math sheets.  They are multiplication and division.  Sometimes we do Math Frenzy, adding and subtracting.  Our teacher is reading us a chapter book called Frindle!  I think the book is very interesting!  Every day we have silent reading and we get to pick our home reading books!

Friday, January 8, 2016

#HourOfCode at SSES



We held our #HourofCode in December before the holidays! 

Our favorite apps are Lightbot, Kodable, Scratch Jr. and Box Island.  We also like visiting code.org to challenge our thinking with lines of code.

"Everyone should learn how to code....it teaches you how to think." ~ Steve Jobs