ABOUT THE OPERA LAB The Opera Lab is an innovative highly interactive program designed to teach your students the A-B-and high Cs of opera! Guided by four professional singers specially trained in improvisation, your students will learn the building blocks of this fascinating art form and use them to construct their very own opera, performed […]

Sand is one-of-a-kind, like a fingerprint. The sand found on every beach is unique, a product of its local environment. It articulates a story from hundreds to thousands to millions of years of weathering, breakdown, and erosion. Grains have been tossed around by waves or washed through a watershed. Sand tells us information about rock […]

Among the many talented performers this morning, Leona and Ava sang, “How Far I’ll Go.” 

The fourth grade students concluded their study of the California missions this week. They researched the missions in teams. Each team created a written report, created a replica of its mission in Minecraft (including an audio tour of the mission), and presented their learning to the class. The last piece was focused on public speaking […]

Upcoming Tests, Projects, & Quizzes Unit 26 Spelling Test–Friday, 3/24/17 __________________________ Upcoming Events Santa Barbara Opera Lab–Thursday, 3/23/17 (1:00-2:00) Santa Barbara City College Geology Lab Field Trip–Friday, 3/24/17 (10:30-12:30) Spring Break–3/25/17-4/9/17  Crane Track & Field Day–Tuesday, 4/25/17 (10:30-2:00) Santa Cruz Island Field Trip–Friday, 4/28/17 Lower School Art Show & Spring Concert–Thursday, 5/4/17 (5:15) Grandparents’ Day–Friday, […]

Monday Read for 20 minutes and record it in your reading log. Your nightly reading should be a book that you are reading for your next book report. Remember that you must choose a different genre each time, and graphic novels count as a genre. When you finish it, you can choose any book you would like to […]

Tom Strelich is the Pipe Major of the Santa Barbara Sheriff Pipe & Drum Corps, a volunteer element of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department.  Local pipers and drummers started the band in 2007, and it is the only Law Enforcement pipe band between Los Angeles and San Francisco. On Friday, Tom paid us a […]

AJ wrote a fabulous poem based on his picture book exploration. The students read picture books looking for words that “strike the soul.” Notice AJ’s use of similes. “Jumping to the Stars” by AJ Up I go, ready to do tricks to jump and flip So many tricks Which one is next? It feels like I […]

Another great way to visualize equivalent fractions is by lining up equivalent fraction cards next to each other. As the students wrote down the equivalent fractions in their math journals, they began to notice patterns. As we were writing down the equivalent fractions for one half, one student commented,”Look, the denominator goes 2, 4, 6, […]

Students are using pattern blocks to add and subtract fractions. This provides students a visual representation of what it really means to add and subtract fractions that have different denominators. By switching out one larger pattern block for smaller pattern blocks, we have concrete examples of the operation. One method is the “take-away” method. Students pull […]