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Last week, RPDS 3rd grade students presented their “Oral Biography on a Famous American” projects. With guidance from our wonderful librarian team, students chose a famous American to learn about. For the past month or so, they have been reading a biography cover-to-cover, making notes, and arranging a costume and prop for a 2-3 minute oral presentation. Students used guidelines from a rubric to practice and prepare for their big day. Items on the rubric included “delivery” (eye contact, expression, and voice projection), “content” (pertinent information, feeling of completeness, and conclusion), and “effort” (familiarity with the subject). Well done, 3rd grade

Recently our 6th grade students built DNA! Students used licorice as the backbones and jelly beans as their nucleotides. Students learned how only certain sets of nucleotides can fit together. When building their DNA structures, students had to ensure they chose the right color jelly beans to build sequences containing adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine.

RPDS Maker of the Month goes to 3rd Graders: Co Bryan, Harper Green, Isabella Gutierrez, and Max Harbin

RPDS 3rd grade students spent January working on a Southeastern State project in STEAM, using background knowledge on the Southeast region from their social studies unit.

Mrs. Worsham has been practicing Inspirational Math this week with her 6th Grade students! Stanford Graduate School of Education Professor Jo Boaler, designed this new program to help inspire young learners and engage them more deeply in math. Today’s lesson was focused on graphing. First students had to use the room as a live graph to show everything from their range of birthdays, emotions, and temperature. The lesson concluded with students creating their own graph to express their opinions on books, sports, movies, & more.

Yesterday, 6th grade students visited the Cummer Museum, to take a close look at Hughie Lee-Smith's painting titled "End of the Festival" in order to analyze it and compare its thematic and atmospheric elements to “Okay for Now”, a coming of age novel that deals with themes of possibility, belonging, and finding one's true and complete self.

We kicked off the month of February with a full school flag-raising ceremony this morning. One of our favorite parts of flag-raising ceremonies is seeing our students confidently embrace leadership.

Each year our 5th and 6th grade students have the option of entering the City of Jacksonville’s Tomorrow’s Leaders contest by writing an essay based on a statement made by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Tomorrow’s Leaders contest recognizes youth in our community who exemplify the philosophies of Dr. King through leadership, community volunteerism and civic responsibility. This year three RPDS students were selected as winners from all of the submissions across the city.

Throughout the month of November, the RPDS community collected food donations to be given to Downtown Ecumenical Services Council (D.E.S.C.). Prior to Thanksgiving break our 6th Grade Leadership Council worked hard to sort, organize, and deliver the donations.

This week our 6th grade students celebrated the kick-off of Project LEADS! 

A few 5th grade students from Mrs. Baldwin's homeroom class decided they wanted to have a bake sale and lemonade stand to raise money in support of our friends at St. Johns Riverkeeper.

As our 1st grade students continue their exploration of Africa, today in music class they created instruments to share an African folk tale. 

It was a bright and festive day here at RPDS as we celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month as a school community.

Today we were thrilled to welcome acclaimed author, Carmen Agra Deedy to campus as our 2021 Author-In-Residence. Ms. Deedy is the author of 12 books for children, including The Library Dragon, The Cheshire Cheese Cat, Martina the Beautiful Cockroach, and 14 Cows for America, a New York Times Bestseller. Her book The Rooster Who Would Not be Quiet! was a Florida Sunshine State Young Reader Award nominee. Her personal stories first appeared on NPR's All Things Considered. Funny and insightful, Ms. Deedy's narratives are culled from her childhood as a Cuban refugee living in Decatur, Georgia. She is host of the four-time Emmy-winning children's program Love That Book!

Ms. Deedy spent time with students in Kindergarten through 6th grade, sharing vibrant and animated stories, as well as inspiring our students to create their own stories.

The Class of 2021 shared many of their favorite RPDS memories through original skits in our annual Flying Chapel this morning. Flying Chapel is a long-standing RPDS tradition. Hats off to our 6th Graders for a job well done in this celebratory Chapel!

Lights, cameras, and getting ready for action!

We are very exciting for the upcoming production of Annie Jr. School Musical on May 5th and 6th! One of our favorite parts of school plays is seeing our students learn all the different components of putting on a production, including set design. Every Thursday we have a dedicated group of students measuring, painting, and even learning how to use power tools to make beautiful backdrops for our school musical.

After learning about Renaissance artist, Michelangelo, 1st grade students had a fun surprise. Each child had paper taped under their table and had the opportunity to experience what it might have been like for Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel.

RPDS 5th Grade students have written poetry! Recently our Instructional Technology Coordinator, Mrs. Nazzarini visited 5th grade classes to help students begin creating e-books to publish their poetry. After building the start of their e-books last week, this week in art class the students have been creating illustrations to accompany their writing and complete their publications. We can't wait to see the finished products these students have worked so hard on!