Dynamic Opportunities Newsletter

MUSIC AND MOVEMENT

In Performing Arts class this week students continued their ocean-inspired skits and movements. Some classes worked through movements inspired by creatures found near the hole in the bottom of the sea, while other classes broke into groups and had to create a skit of chance-solving problems like getting inked by a squid, or not being able to swim. Next week we will begin to bring our creations to life!!

Social Studies

In Social Studies class this week students learned about pirates! We discussed a few specific pirates including Blackbeard and his connection to our home state of North Carolina. We talked about the motive behind pirates and their pillaging, but we also discussed other aspects of pirates such as their democratic system of choosing the ship’s captain. Finally we learned about some famous pirates who were in fact women… just to show it wasn’t just a man’s world!

Technology

In technology class this week students from all four rooms worked collaboratively to build a ocean floor cleaning robot. We utilized different pieces from our tear-apart day in technology class last week to create a robot that could both sift such garbage off the ocean floor and lift heavy objects with its mechanical arm and fingers!

Life Skills

In Daily Living Skills and Language Arts, we worked on our job applications for school jobs. We also discussed the salary for those jobs and then what the reward would be as we accumulate Dynamic Dollars.  Students got very excited that we will be opening the school store again!

P.E.

In PE this week we continued dipping our toes into our new baseball unit. We played a game to get to know the bases and some classes wanted to take a crack at swinging the bat!

SCIENCE

STEM this week was all about The Great Barrier Reef, focusing on coral and animals that live there. 

Students learned that a barrier reef is a fringing reef that has been separated from land and enclosed by a lagoon between the land and the reef.  In the Pacific Ocean, Kane’ohe Bay is the northern most barrier reef. It’s considered a true reef. 

Animals of barrier reefs we talked about were Goatfish, Butterflyfish, the Moray Eel, and Damesfish. We concluded this week with talking about different types of coral and also discussed the Giant Squid.

Art

In Art this week we finished all the beautiful decorations you might have seen at our Winterfest Dance this past Friday! 

MUSIC

This week we continued our work on notation and learning about new instruments. We explored the genre of bluegrass and what a mandolin is. We played and sang songs and worked on playing together in time.

TRANSITIONS

This week in Transitions we practiced our interview skills, helped decorate for the big dance, did some sensory “play” to help develop our fine motor skills, and had a little bit of free time to just be teenagers together.