Phone: 378-5209
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Ms. Kareken
I am the K-5 science teacher. I have been teaching the K-5 science program for 3 years. I love my job! It is nice to be able to see all the students in the school and establish relationships with them. I am having so much fun doing science with all these wonderful students. We focus on the NGSS which we adopted 3 years ago. In doing that we meet our standards, but every year I like to tweak the curriculum a bit, so its not the same activity every year.
This year our 5th graders did a STEM fair, which replaced the long standing science fair. We put groups together and each group had to write a letter to NASA explaining why their mission should be the one to go to Mars. The students were asked to do research on Mars, they had to build a solar system model with the correct distance between planets. They studied solar sails and made one. They watched 7 minutes of terror and had to make a whirlygig that would land the slowest. They made group rockets and individual rockets which we shot off and measured which one went the farthest and which group rocket's egg did not crack! They designed and made exercise equipment for their shuttle and a spacesuit. ANd lastly they created a space shuttle with littlebits technology. They also explored a diagram of Mars with ozobots, which they had to code. We merged coding, with engineering, writing, math and science to solve this real world problem! Yay 5th graders!
I love to bike, run and teach. I truly feel privileged to have this job.