This Spring 20 of our third, fourth, and fifth graders participated in our new "Robotics Club" taught by Mrs. Bento. Every Thursday for 5 weeks students would explore robotics, technology, and coding concepts with the simple task of "make something that does something." Students had the option of using Dash and Dot Robots, Cubelets, LEGO WeDo, or even LEGO Movie to make stop-motion films. Many students created short videos and movies of their experience using iMovie. Check out some of their grea...

This Spring 20 3rd - 5th graders joined Mr. Soles for our Green Team after school enrichment program. During Green Team the students participated in environmental science themed lessons such as studying soil samples, mapping water flow through our schoolyard habitat, and observing our native food webs. Additionally, the students helped to maintain our beautiful gardens by weeding, pruning, and spreading mulch. They even helped to stain-finish our new dry erase message center! This message center...

This Spring 24 first and second graders joined Ms. Chapman after school for a special CODE.org Course I enrichment program. During the class the students made their way through the CODE.org Course I curriculum which teaches basic coding and computer programming skills. Joining Ms. Chapman were five student teachers who graduated from our CODE.org Course II and III classes earlier in the school year. These CODE superstars included Emily G from 5th grade, Devon K. and Josue R. from 4th grade, and ...

Congratulations to all of our participants and winners of our 24th annual Science Fair here at Will Rogers! All K-5 students were invited to complete a project in one of three categories: experiment, engineering, or research. All projects were scored on process, display, creativity, and live presentation.  Our judges included Bret Klopfenstein, VUSD Science Specialist; Steve Hongola, Senior Ecologist from Rincon Consulting Inc.; and Judy Anderson, Will Rogers' part-time science teacher. There wa...

Will Rogers was selected as one of twelve California public schools in 2016 to receive a Green Ribbon Award for excellence in environmental science facilities, curriculum, and health and wellness. This official press release was released on February 26, 2016. VUSD superintendent Dr. Michael Babb, Will Rogers Principal Danielle Cortes, and Will Rogers Teachers Mandi de Witte and Kris Guzman attended the award ceremony press conference event in Alameda, CA on February 26th.

Last Thursday the 4th and 5th graders in the after school LEGO club finished their "Construction Site" engineering and coding LEGO projects. The students met with class teacher Ms. Moraga for 5 weeks after school to build tower cranes, forklifts, and drawbridges out of LEGOs, and then program them using basic coding skills to operate on motion and tilt sensors. On the last day of the class the students shared their projects by creating iMovies, featured below. It was a fun learning experience fo...

This Winter the students who took CODE.org course II in the fall were invited back for 5 more classes of advanced coding action in CODE.org Course III with Ms. Chapman! The students took their programming even further this time around, and even designed their own video games and stories using code. Check out some of their work!    Click here to watch "the croc" A CODE story by Evan Geske, fifth grade - "It was so cool that I was able to make a story using code and that every videogame I’ve ever...

During the week of February 8th through 11th, all four third grade classes visited the science lab every day to take part in a comprehensive science investigation just like real scientists! The week long investigation required students to make observations, plan and carry our their own unique experiments, collect and graph results, as well as write and present their conclusions. At the end of the experiments, all groups created a poster presentation to share their findings with the class, just a...

On December 8th, 2015, Will Rogers took part in a global initiative to get students K-12 involved in computer science, called "The Hour of Code." Every single Will Rogers student spent at least one hour of their school day coding on December 8th. "Coding" is a type of computer science that involves learning how to write programs, so learning how to code is basically learning to speak the language of computers! Our 5th, 1st, and Kindergarten classes even had special visitors from Ventura High Sch...

On Friday December 4th, third, fourth, and fifth grade students at Will Rogers sent their first batch of letters to their new pen pals at our new sister school: "ESCUELA PRIMARIA 25 DE OCTUBRE DE 1697" located in Loreto, Baja Mexico. Earlier this year, the city of Ventura entered a Sister City relationship with Loreto. Ms. Julie Salomonson, one of our Will Rogers parents and active PTA members, joined Ventura's sister city committee and has led the efforts in beginning the pen pal program. Julie...