Buhler+Today

August and September 2008 -



 * "Seven Wonders of Sassafrass Springs" read aloud to 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th grades in class and during library times
 * focusing on similarities - setting is a small town, children include people (in addition to physical locations) as wonders, theme of appreciating the good things in a small town rather than having to travel to find wonders

===October 2008 - Buhler Frolic (yearly town celebration) booth. 4th grade students created posters advertising and summarizing the "Seven Wonders/Buhler Legacy" project. These posters were displayed around our school and in local businesses. At our city's festival, the students manned a booth with a slideshow and with an iPod and microphone, prepared to interview any Buhler residents who wanted to share their opinion about what parts of Buhler should be considered "wonders".===

This is one of the posters that the students created (in the Pages program, converted to a PDF to be posted on this site), which was displayed in a local business.


 * 4th grade students toured Buhler and took digital pictures of residents, businesses, and points of interest to be included in posters advertising our project at our town festival. They made educated guesses about which things in Buhler might be considered "wonders" by the people who live here.


 * 4th and 6th grade students then interviewed community members to get recommendations for the Seven Wonders of Buhler. They talked to their parents, neighbors, people from their churches, etc to get input about what aspects of Buhler might be considered "wonders".


 * After students interviewed someone, each student wrote a summary of his/her "nominee",presented to their classmates and voted to find the top 12 nominees.


 * 4th grade small groups were assigned one of the 12 nominees to focus on, and assigned to create a persuasive advertisement using Keynote. These advertisements were shared with the entire 4th grade group and then over our school television news program, BGTV.
 * media type="file" key="Ye old Box Car.mov" width="258" height="258"media type="file" key="SM by TAS.mov" width="263" height="263" align="right"media type="file" key="Town Jail.mov" width="266" height="266" align="center"


 * In the last week of school, the 4th grade had a geocaching day. With the help of parent volunteers, they participated in a "scavenger hunt" all through the city of Buhler and located the top 12 wonders. Each team used a grid to help keep them organized, a GPS system to find the coordinates, and a digital camera to record their group's finds.



This link includes 4 documents that we used to guide students on their end of the year scavenger hunt around Buhler. Each group was given a Geocaching BINGO board with specific coordinates to locate. Our instruction page was reviewed with both parents and students and each student in the group was assigned a role that rotated throughout the hunt. At each station students were to find a bag with review questions, sign their team name, and mark the answer to the question on their BINGO board.


 * Using the Intel Visual Ranking tool students in 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grades ranked their favorite advertisements to narrow the field to seven wonders.



As part of our TRC grant project, the 4th and 6th grade students at Buhler Grade School have interviewed community members to generate a list of what people around Buhler believe to be "wonders," or things that best represent our town. The following are the top 12 items on the list. We had students in grades 3-6 prioritize the list and narrow it down to the top 7. Instructions given to the students were included in the Visual Ranking page and are as follows: Please use your opinion to rank the following people, places, or things in order from what you would most like to see as a "wonder" of Buhler down to least likely to be a "wonder." Remember to think about what best represents the town. 86 partner pairs of 3rd through 6th graders used the Visual Ranking tool at [|www.intel.com/education/visualranking/]to achieve this task.

Second TRC Year: 2009-2010 August 2009 - 4th, 5th, & 6th grade classes began the year with a refresher activity about the Seven Wonders project. After practicing geocaching for a few afternoons, the classes divided into 12 groups to complete a GPS scavenger hunt around Buhler to locate the 7 wonders. This project included parent support for each small group of students.
 * Goals and Objectives:**



(Include lesson plan, equipment needed: camera, GPS, batteries, pencils, guide sheets, papers that were posted at each wonder to give the students clues)

media type="custom" key="5592849"

Carla took 4th and 5th grade students to present to City Council about the project (since we had asked permission to place signs around town for the Geocaching Scavenger Hunt, and since we are hoping to add this project to the city's website.)