MOST POPULAR VIDEOS

• 1:19 Earth Day Posters

  In celebration of Earth Day 2021, Decatur Middle School Students recently created informational and persuasive posters that are displayed in our hallway that promote ecological awareness and encourage positive change towards environmental stewardship.

  Uploaded May 20, 2021 by Gerard Kovach
• 00:29 Gearing Up to Explore Science!

  This short slideshow shows some images of how the world of Science exploration is all around us. The pics of the bees were taken by Mr. K at Chicago Botanic Gardens, an ant colony living in a tree brach out on the playground discovered by some students and photo was taken by Mr. M, and of course, our nonhuman specimens in our classroom pond ecosystem with baby fish caught from Lake Michigan, crayfish, and our lovable bearded dragon Curtiss, who likes to hang out with students, and from the picture I mean literally:)

  Uploaded Aug 27, 2022 by Gerard Kovach
• 2:46 Week 18: Jan. 18-21, 2022

  This week's slideshow highlights: students enjoying some independent reading of Science texts during our calm transition time at the beginning of class thanks to the generous donations of engaging STEM books and magazines from Decatur families; 6th graders cooperatively analyzing and interpreting graphs to identify correlation and causation of variables related to global warming; 7th graders engaging in a collaborative coin toss activity to simulate the randomness of organisms passing their alleles of their genes onto their offspring during sexual reproduction; 6th graders reviewing unit vocabulary terms with quizlet, a fun online learning software platform; and a spattering of pics of our students interacting with our class pet lizard, Curtiss, and investigating aquatic microorganisms from our classroom aquatic ecosystem.

  Uploaded Jan 22, 2022 by Gerard Kovach
• 00:56 Week 3 | Mask-Making Preparation & Brainstorming

  This week, 6th graders reflected on various resources to discuss why we wear masks and what would happen if we decided to show the world what was behind our masks. As a continuation of our Identity & Community unit, students began brainstorming and drafting ideas for a mask that they will be constructing in some of our upcoming classes.

  Uploaded Sep 17, 2021 by Marianne Sharping
• 3:54 Commutative Property of Multiplication
  Uploaded Oct 02, 2020 by Katie Andorka
• 1:35 Week 19: Jan. 24-27, 2022

  This week highlights: 8th grade investigating with the skills of paleontologists and geologists examining fossils and stratigraphic drill core samples as part of their unit exploring Evolution; an 8th grade student hand feeding some meal worms to our class pet bearded dragon, "Curtiss"; 6th graders investigating examples of natural resources as they began their new inquiry unit into the impact of increasing human population on the Earth's natural resource deposits, as well as a couple of 6th graders doing some independent microscopy inquiry on their own time.

  Uploaded Jan 29, 2022 by Gerard Kovach
• 00:02
  Uploaded Sep 30, 2023 by Renie Petropoulos
• 1:44 Decatur First Lego League Goes to State!

  Congratulations to our Decatur First Lego League Team! The 2 x 4's represented Decatur with such grace at the Illinois State First Lego League Robotics competition at Elgin Community College. The team won a special award known as "The Breakthrough Award" and more than quadrupled their Robotics score from where they started out 2 years ago! The future looks bright for Decatur First Lego League!

  Uploaded Jan 22, 2022 by Gerard Kovach
• 00:13 K Science

  Kindergarten had fun exploring our Chapter 2 Question
  How do we make a pinball move as far as we want?

  Uploaded Jan 29, 2021 by Sheryl Slechta
• 2:24 New Year Update

  Please check out this video which highlights ways we are continually working to strengthen our classroom community so that each student has multiple ways of sharing their own voice, ideas, and questions about science with the class despite the extra challenges of remote learning! I am so amazed by our Decatur students' resilience during these challenging times of this ongoing pandemic!
  
  We also continue to work on strengthening classroom community by celebrating at the end of each week with some fun trivia games such as Kahoot and Gimkit, both of which could easily be played at home for some added family fun!

  Uploaded Feb 18, 2021 by Gerard Kovach