SEARCH Students at Mt. Vernon Elem.

Mt. Vernon Elementary School 4th and 5th-grade SEARCH students culminated their recent study of sharks by dissecting specimens! They held a mock debate the week before the dissection to argue the pros and cons of using lab specimens for educational purposes. After dissecting the sharks, they practiced creative thinking and English Language Arts skills by writing friendly letters to the dissected shark, thanking him for giving his life to science and also justifying the value of the learning experience.

Riverbend SEARCH Students

Here are pictures from some projects we have done recently:

Picture 1- We learned how tesselations are made, and created our own.

Pictures 2,3,6,7,8,9- Our 3rd graders created their own country from the outline of their body (they tried to create some interesting coastlines!)  Then they placed landforms appropriately, named and labeled bodies of water, created a capital, flag, national bird, and seal.

Picture 5- 4th graders made a prediction from our reading and acted out the courtroom scene before reading on.

Picture 10- K and 1 coming out of the Search Room during Read Across America


Studying Tessellating Art at Mt. Vernon Elem.

Fourth and fifth-grade SEARCH students at Mt. Vernon Elementary School have studied tessellating art. They created original tessellating designs from regular equilaterals. The process used to create the designs was called a “slide translation”. Each figure must have a sum of the interior angles that is a factor of 360 degrees in order to tessellate.

Georgia Performance Standards:
M4/5G1; M4/5 P1; M5M1; M4M2; M5N1; M4/5P4; M4/5P5

Friendship Cries Wolf

Fourth and fifth-grade students at Friendship Elementary learned about freedom of speech from Deborah Craytor, Director of Law-Related Education with the State Bar. Students were given an oral examination and all of them received Honorary Attorney for the Day certificates.

Nine fifth-grade students had the exciting experience of conducting a mock trial entitled Village of Sheepfold v. Wolfcryer. The participates were Mrs. Forbes, Judge; Mitchell Daniel, Bailiff; Morgan Frazier, Jury Foreperson; Valentina Falcon, Prosecuting Attorney; Phillip Correa, Defense Attorney; Caleb Payne, Joey Wolfcryer; Caleb Nation, Roscoe Woolsey; Emily Combs, Felicity Agnes; Lindsey Vaughn, Terry Shearer; and Sidney Dunigan, Gladys Lupine. Student juries deliberated for the verdict.

Download Photo Slideshow here!


Social Studies Fair Project Winnners from Lula Elem.


Will Davidson and Khian Skidmore from Mrs. Dale's SEARCH class earned first place in the Hall County Social Studies Fair in the History division for fifth and sixth grade. Will and Khian surveyed and researched the impact that the Desert Storm conflict had on families in our area.

Jones Elementary Stock Market Game Winnners


The students in Michael Boyle’s 5th grade class at Jones Elementary recently completed the Fall 2008, Stock Market Game. The team consisting of (left-right) Evelin Avitia, Raquel Godinez, Haley McDonald, and Christian Aguilar won 1st place for their region out of 52 teams, and 91st in the State of Georgia out of 3443 teams including High School and Middle School teams. They had 26.4747% growth above the S&P 500 index for the same time frame, September – December. Congratulations to them and to Jones Elementary for incorporating Rigor into the Math curriculum…

CMES Odysses of the Mind Team


4th graders Abby Russell, Connor Lofton, Jacob Frier, Harrison Caston, Ashley Thomas, Bradley Williams and Matthew Minor. This was the first year for Chestnut Mountain to compete.