Dragon Dispatches January: Snapshots into the first month back!

New York Metro Area Scholastic Chess Championship

We rang in the new year with some fabulous news from the New York Metro Area Scholastic Chess Championship! We had 33 Dragons compete at the event…and our K-1 Championship team (First Grade or below) placed FIRST and are the NY Metro Champions! Our Primary Championship team (Third Grade or below) placed ninth, both our Elementary Championship team (Fifth Grade or below) and Junior High Championship team (Eighth Grade or below) tied for fifth, and our Elementary U1100 team placed sixth! Amazing!

Individually, in the K-1 Championship section, Tren T-C. claimed second place, while fellow Dragons Leon Y. And Risheek P. Tied for seventh, and Autumn Z. earned the second place U400 class prize. And in the Elementary U1100 section, Eva L. earned the second place U700 class prize, while Yuv M. tied for fourth in the Primary U600 section! Wahoo!

Our Dragons had an amazing time — with a special treat that GM Abhimanyu Mishra (the youngest player to earn the GM title) was handing out the awards! Congrats to all of our Speyer Chess players, our fabulous coaches, and awesome Chess parents! GO DRAGONS!

Spotted on the Boulevard: Growing Gators!

Before Winter Break, our Third Grade Dragons read the book Zack's Alligator by Shirley Mozelle in Science class. The book is about a boy who gets an alligator keychain that grows and comes alive when he puts it in water. They used this book as a jumping-off point for an experiment: What would happen if WE put a toy alligator in water?

After submerging their toy alligators for several days, each third grader collected various data to track their alligator's growth via a variety of measurements. They utilized what they have been learning in their current unit on metric measurements, including how to calculate length, weight, and volume. They also explored how to best organize their data, make close observations, and collaborate with a partner — skills that are emphasized in every Science unit at Speyer.

From giving their toys a name (Marshmallow, Chompy, Frog, and Mini Beast were a few favorites we heard) to the surprise of how the alligators have morphed each time they come to class, our students love all aspects of this project, particularly the weighing their alligators on the digital scales.

And this fabulous project isn't over yet! Our third graders will continue to measure their alligators and when they notice a slowing of growth, they will take them out of the water and see if they shrink back down. At the end of the unit, they will graph their data as a class and come up with certain conclusions. Shout-out to Ms. Duffy, Ms. DiPietro, and our young scientists!

Find nonfiction features! STAT! 

Our fourth graders are studying all aspects of reading and writing nonfiction as part of an integrated unit with Humanities. They are working toward a larger assignment of writing their own nonfiction articles about the Columbian Exchange. To prepare for this, they are honing their research skills in nonfiction book clubs and learning how nonfiction articles are structured and what features are typically included in nonfiction work.

After exploring text features found in nonfiction articles, students put their knowledge to work! With their classroom transformed into an operating room, students donned surgical masks, hair nets, and doctor badges! The challenge? Go on a scavenger hunt using classroom magazines to find a list of different nonfiction text features...and save their patients!

To have a successful "operation", our fourth graders had to find and cut out specific nonfiction text features and paste them on their patients. They also had make sure they didn’t miss anything on the surgery to-do list and label all of the parts.

Thankfully every group was able to finish in time and save their patients from being text featureless! Of course, our Doctor Dragons had a lot of fun with this assignment and they especially loved getting to dress up as doctors and naming their patients!

Coding, Circuitry, and Creativity: Lower School Dragons in Makers Lab!

Speyer's Makers Lab has been exploding with creativity and innovation, with some of our youngest Dragons learning coding and circuitry.

Kindergarteners are diving into the world of coding! They are learning what code is through a series of "unplugged" activities. Recently, they learned how computers speak in a special language called binary that only has two modes: on or off. They used a code breaker worksheet to create bracelets with beads that spelled out their initials in binary language!

Meanwhile, Speyer third graders kicked off their unit on circuitry with Makey Makey! They learned all aspects of circuitry: how electricity flows, what conductivity and polarity mean, and what an open/closed circuit is. They used this knowledge to create controllers using Makey Makey boards to control inputs on our Chromebooks. The controllers they created were then wired to control a bongo drum app created by Makey Makey!