Mrs. Lawrence’s Earth & Space Science class welcomed Mrs. Urbano’s 5th grade class last week for a collaborative lesson on the Crystal Caves of Mexico!
High School students invited the 5th graders to their classroom after each class recently learned about caves and cave formation. Together, they recreated a lab to make ornaments that model crystal formation using borax and hot water.
“This was a great opportunity for our 5th graders to see a High School science lab and gain hands-on experience!” said Mrs. Lawrence.
For their Arts and Letters unit, Mrs. Urbano’s class has been reading the book “All Thirteen” by Christina Soontornvat, which documents the 2018 boys Thai soccer team who were stuck in a cave for 18 days. A focus of the reading unit is cave formations and what natural occurrences happened both inside and outside the cave that caused the boys to become trapped.
High School students recently completed a unit on White Sands National Park in New Mexico, where they learned about and compared mineral growth in the National Park versus the Crystal Cave in Mexico.
The two classes came together last week for a hands-on science lab where older and younger students shared what they learned.
“This is interdisciplinary learning at its finest with older and younger students working collaboratively to learn true science content,” said Superintendent Dr. Thomas Reardon. “It’s not only a model for best practices in learning, but it’s also what makes Schalmont so special, working together to form relationships and helping one another in the learning process.”
Great job, Sabres! #sabrepride