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 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 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...

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...

This year Will Rogers hosted its first ever family STEaM Night! STEaM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Technology. Friday night June 5th the Will Rogers cafeteria was transformed into a fun-filled fest of hands-on STEaM activities for the whole family! Also on display were all science fair projects, as well as the amazing environmental science theme projects that students worked so hard on throughout the entire year to complete during class time. UC Santa Barbara's REEF also...

Congratulations to all of our participants and winners of our 23rd annual Science Fair here at Will Rogers! For the first time, students were able to enter projects into three distinct categories: Experiment, Research, or Engineering. This expanded the range of projects students were able to do, as well as increased the creativity level! Additionally, this was also the first year students were asked to explain their projects to live judges. Our judges included Dr. Susan Johnson, science educatio...

Fourth grade students built, tested, and raced solar cars this week as part of their yearlong study of energy sources. Students worked in small groups to build the cars, then took them out into the sun to test them out. They were pleasantly surprised to see the wheels immediately spinning when the solar panel was pointed towards the sun! Students had to troubleshoot how to fix wheels that fell off and cars driving crooked to prepare for a solar car race. This experience provides students with me...