Wonderful weather!

Our 2nd graders are researching types of weather conditions and how each affects us in North Carolina. They are working in pairs, and will produce a story video, slid presentation, or other multimedia project. Did you know too much sun can be bad for our environment? Or flooding can actually help us? Ask a Dana 2nd grader!

Researching in 4th!

The 4th graders are researching the Civil War and how it affected Western North Carolina. We have spent several days searching through books, encyclopedias, online databases, and connecting to websites about the Coastal Plains, the Piedmont, and our Mountains. We could probably spend about two more weeks! There's so much information out there.

Where do we come from?

Dana's 5th graders are researching immigration and migration. How and why do different groups of people move? What are the causes and effects? Each student took the part of someone in a family in several different cultures and interviewed each other for their final product. The experience developed empathy for people from many historical situations.

Dana's 3rd graders have just finished their Civil War Big 6 research project. Some are sharing their notes with their partners. Others are checking the sources used with their citation page.

Book Fair

Our recent Book Fair was very successful with total sales of over $4800! When we roll over the majority of our profit into Scholastic dollars, Scholastic doubles our available purchasing monies. We are using those dollars to buy several series of books. Thank you so much for participating in both the in-school AND online fair!

Research Center

Research Center. That is the new name of the area formerly known as the Media Center. The center has been redesigned to include several "schools". The School of Liberal Arts includes the classroom area, multi-user SmartBoard, and set of 25 laptop computers. The school of History, Civics, and Geography includes materials about these topics as well as our school's voting booths. The School of Literature is our Reading Well and surrounding book shelves and magazine area. The School of Biological Sciences includes reading materials, microscopes, specimen cases, and DNA models. The North Carolina University area is very hands-on with state symbols, old timey games, and NC geography maps and rock specimens. The School of Meteorology includes our Weather Bug station that shares Dana weather information with our global community! All of these areas combine to provide Dana students with the means of digging deep into their research topics!

Graphic Novels

New Collection!  We have a new reading collection at Dana! We have started building a graphic novel collection.  Graphic novels are set up in comic book style.  The books may be fiction, like the Bad Kitty series, or may be nonfiction.  Some of our nonfiction titles are Bigfoot, World War II, and a series of mysteries that are answered by using geometry.  These books are always checked out, but we will be receiving our order of 30+ very soon.