SMART Music

Cactus Ranch 3rd graders use an interactive keyboard to gain knowledge about the layout of the notes before beginning a keyboard unit in music class.

Cactus Ranch Weather Station

A big thanks goes out to one of our many invoolved parents, Bob Eckstein, who donated  a Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather station to Cactus Ranch. Teachers and students can now monitor numerous amounts of data including temperature, wind speed and direction, rainfall, barometric pressure, humidity, and UV index.



Student Presentation Wins an Award

2nd grade student Colin P was awarded 1st place in the annual RRISD Black History Month Essay Contest. Colin submitted his presentation about Harriet Tubman for the contest. He says that he first became interested about Harriet Tubman after studying about her in 1st grade. Click on the image above to view Colin's presentation. Way to go Colin!

Taking Technology into Battle

Cactus Ranch 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders had the opportunity to participate
in the Battle of the Bluebonnets this spring. Students qualified for the
battle by reading at least 10 books off of this year's Bluebonnet Award
nominee list. Almost 30 students met the challenge and got the chance to go
head-to-head to show their knowledge about the books on this year's list.
The Battle of the Bluebonnets was held in the library and students used
TurningPoint clickers to record their answers as they competed in the
trivia game. The competition was intense, and the students had fun
celebrating each time they got a question right! The top 5 scorers won a
spot on the Cactus Ranch Battle of the Bluebonnets team and went on to
represent our school in a disrict-wide competition held at Patsy Sommer
Elementary. Our Cactus Ranch team did a great job competing against teams
from the other Round Rock ISD elementary schools and came in 6th place!

3rd Grade Students Discover Simple Machines

Cactus Ranch 3rd grade students learned about six simple machines including the pulley, wheel and axle, screw, inclined plane, wedge, and lever. Each student created their own simple machine project and presented to their class a demonstration of how their simple machine worked. Harley from Ms. Jenkins class demonstrated her knowledge about levers by creating a Prezi presentation.

Simple Machines: Levers on Prezi

Kindergarten Class Visits Stanford University

Half of Mrs.Conley's class wants to be a scientist after skyping with Dr.N.R. Conley in Palo Alto, California.  Dr. Conley took the class on a virtual tour of his lab at Stanford University showing them lab mice and cancer cells through a very high power microscope . The kids also got to see a whole lab of fruit flies and their freezer, along with other tools a scientist would uses. He also showed them nutrients used to feed cells for experiments and they got to meet other scientist in the lab. He did a kindergarten experiment for the kids with the egg going into the bottle when heated. Dr. Conley answered lots of five year old questions. The class loved it and talked about it for several days afterward. It really was a lasting science lesson to be remembered.They ask frequently "when can we skype Dr.Conley again?"

4th Graders Skype with Author Tom Angleberger

On September 20, the 4th graders got to skype with Tom Angleberger, author of The Strange Case of the Origami Yoda and Darth Paper Strikes Back. The students were able to ask Tom Angleberger questions about writing and his books, and then they got to make their own origami yodas. Want to make your own origami yoda or other cool origami characters? You can find instructions at origamiyoda.wordpress.com!