Berkshire Local Schools will host a year-end parade for all students in the district on June 1 at the Kent State University-Geauga Campus...
District Hosts Year-End Parade
Berkshire Local Schools will host a year-end parade for all students in the district on June 1 at the Kent State University-Geauga Campus parking lot as a staging ground from 4 to 6 p.m. At the parade, teachers from each building will be assembled in respective areas around the KSU-Geauga parking lot to wave, hold signs and see the smiling faces of their students one final time.
Senior members of the class of 2020 will be permitted to drive their tractors as part of the annual tradition during the parade. In addition, sixth-graders will receive the yearly “clap-off” to seventh-grade during the parade as well.
All participants will enter and exit from the Troy-Claridon Road ingress/egress after circling the parking lot for the parade.
Great Lakes Growers Hosts Virtual Field Trip
The Berkshire Local Schools thanks Great Lakes Growers for being such a fantastic partner and allowing district students to grow in their engagement and interaction with their plant growing processes.
Last week, first-grade students, who have been learning about the needs of living things and plants in general, took a virtual field trip to the Great Lakes Growers’ operation in Middlefield to learn more about how they grow plants hydroponically.
Students received a tour of the greenhouses and saw various plants in different life cycle stages. They also saw how technology is used to water the plants, control the amount of sun and monitor the temperature of the greenhouse as well move the plants through the greenhouse. One interesting point of instruction came regarding how plants need specific light to grow and why Great Lakes Growers uses a pink light in their greenhouse.
Thanks to John and Kara Bonner and their two daughters, Belle and Lola, for showing the first-grade students all around through the virtual environment.
2nd-Graders Build Umbrellas to Keep Hoppers Healthy
Ledgemont Elementary School second-graders in Mrs. Nguyen’s, Mrs. Huber’s and Mr. Malkus’ classrooms have all been working hard together in groups to create a new invention for their classrooms, until everyone heard the news of the initial extended spring break from Gov. DeWine on March 12. Starting at the beginning of distance learning, students began with reading the second-grade text, “The Umbrella Trick from Reading A-Z.”
During the first week, students read the story and had to write from a character’s perspective about the story. After reading and writing, students were then asked “Can we build an umbrella to keep the Hoppers healthy?”
Students were then given a week to begin designing and blueprinting their ideas of how they would make their umbrellas. As students completed their blueprints, they submitted a list of items that they planned on using to build. Once everyone’s materials were submitted, students then had to create an interactive bar graph and answer certain questions pertaining to the graphs they created.
Students then spent the next two weeks building their umbrellas. There was a wide variety of building techniques used by all students that involved welding, taping, rubber bands, glue, duct tape and Legos. After the first week, students were able to begin the real fun – testing out their prototypes.
With the help of parents, students had to see how well their umbrellas held up in the first trial. Some students had buckets of water dumped on them, most used the hose, but someone even used his shower to give it a test run.
Students are to be commended on all they did and teachers were very impressed with the hard work, ingenuity and determination invested. Thank you to all the parents that helped make the PBL a success and to the students who spent so much time on their work.
