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...

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...

On Monday November 23rd, California state senator Hannah-Beth Jackson came on a very special visit to see environmental science in action at our school. Fifth graders Boden, Sinthia, Lizajane, Diego, and Alonda R. hosted the tour and showed off their fifth grade garden experiment where they are comparing the growth of radishes in both organic and conventional soil. The students also took Ms. Jackson to our science lab, where they described lessons they’ve done such as building solar cars, wind ...

This year's jog-a-thon took place on Wednesday, October 14th. All students participated in a special Jog-A-Thon obstacle course complete with hurdles, bean-bag tossing, and hoops to jump through set to fun and energizing music. Students and families raised over $24,000 through this health and wellness related event! This met the school-wide $20,000 goal which triggered an all-staff minion dress-up which occurred on Friday, October 30th. The class who raised the most was Ms. Garcia's who raised o...

This Fall we hosted our first after school Coding class for 3rd - 5th graders using the CODE.org Course II curriculum. The class was taught by our computer lab paraeducator Lisa Chapman, with help from parent Hani Geske, and MSAP science teacher Mrs. de Witte. During the class students learning the basics of programming using both "unplugged" activities without the computer, and online coding challenges using fun characters such as Angry Birds and Flappy. By the end of the course students became...

Yesterday was the last class of our debut session of after school "LEGO Club." For 5 weeks, 4th and 5th graders met after school to design a robotic amusement park using the LEGO WeDo curriculum. Students worked in pairs to design impressive structures including a Ferris wheel, carousel, and a finish line for racing cars. After building the structures, students programmed them to spin, twirl, and light up using visual, block-based coding. Their programs also including tilt and motion sensors, so...

The second annual Dia del los Muertos celebration took place on Thursday, October 29th. The cafeteria was decorated in festive colors with multicolored Papel Picado banners and balloons. All classes/grade levels created colorful, authentic altars. Entertainment provided by the Sal Avila Trio and taco's were served by Sabor. Approximately 200 people attended. Parents and families donated a wide variety of baked goods for the bake sale. Popcorn was also sold. Attendees played loteria, decorated a ...

Our fifth graders used our brand new LEGO WeDo Robotics curriculum for the first time during class today. Their challenge was to build a robot of two dancing birds using LEGOs, and then program the birds to dance and chirp using visual block-based coding on the computer. The fifth graders did a great job with this fun engineering lesson today! This curriculum will be used during regular school hours in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade classes to support learning in STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering...