Recently, Erin Anderson’s 3rd grade class at Westlake Hills Elementary participated in a hospital room transformation. Students became “medical residents" starting their work at our Sacred Heart Medical Center. The students were so excited!! They wore medical garb, such as gowns, masks, hair nets and personnel badges to complete their roles! During our day, we practiced such skills as working with text features, place value, root words, sentence structure, word problems and more! The highlight of the day was their dissection of Jello brains! Inside their strawberry-flavored brains, were hidden clues to help them diagnose their patients. It was so fun to see how serious the "medical students" performed their surgeries!

A recent campus beautification project students have completed is the upcycling of pallets. Students took old pallets and fashioned them into succulent containers and set them in a vacant, bland space on campus. To brighten it up even further they took some of the wood pieces from the pallets and painted inspirational words on them in different colors. When asked what they thought about their recent project, students commented that they felt proud whenever they passed the spot. Indeed, I find them out there with their friends pointing to the word they painted and the succulent they planted. The project incorporated all of the four parts of the CCSS – creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication. Equally importantly, it is a project they got to see through from start to finish and a small legacy they get to leave for the whole campus to enjoy. -- Monica Beck; Conejo Valley High School

O’Keeffe Project, Kandinsky Project and “Make an Early Human Tool” Project -- Lisa Shankar, 6th Grade English/Social Studies Colina Middle School

Ancient Civilizations Portfolio Pages -- Lisa Shankar, 6th Grade English/Social Studies Colina Middle School