Blog Archives

STEAM Cycle 17

12/11/2016

Kindergarten-Design a Paintbrush

The students were introduced to and utilized the design process as they solved a problem presented by fictional characters Angelina, Suzi, and Mylo. The students designed a paintbrush using straws, feathers, and pom poms. After building the new paintbrush, students had the opportunity to paint with it and test their designs.

1st Grade-Design a House 2

The students designed and built one of the three houses described in The Three Little Pigs. Using materials to represent straw, sticks, or bricks, the students constructed a 3-dimensional model. In this lesson, students made improvements to their structures before testing them in front of a fan to see if the wolf could blow it down.

2nd Grade-Dear Santa

The students created a video letter using Photo Booth to tell Santa (or someone who may purchase a gift for them) what they want, need, would wear, would read, a wish for someone else. Completed videos were uploaded to Google Classroom.

3rd Grade-Speedometry 5

Hot Wheels cars took their final trials as the students used loops, extra track, and a vice grip to reach maximum potential and kinetic energy.

4th Grade-Debug

The students continued to code and practice debugging programs. While looking through existing code, students learned how to identify and correct errors.

5th Grade-Capture a Creeper

As our final Minecraft engineering challenge, the students created traps to capture a paper creeper. After completing their designs, they demonstrated the mechanisms by recording a video.

STEAM Cycle 16

12/11/2016

Kindergarten & 1st Grade-Design a House

KA-DH2-Straw from Wendy Baker on Vimeo.

KB-DH2-Bricks from Wendy Baker on Vimeo.

2nd Grade-Smart Presentation

The students created a Google Slides presentation to showcase monthly Smart Vocabulary words. The students defined the words and found images (labeled for reuse) to illustrate the words.

3rd Grade-Speedometry 4

The students continued to learn about potential and kinetic energy using Hot Wheels. In this lesson, the students added height to their ramps with the addition of a clamp that could be attached to a table or other structure.

4th Grade-Relay Programming

Using graph paper images, the students worked in teams to create a program, one instruction at a time. They practiced communicating ideas through codes and symbols, used teamwork to complete a task, and verified the work of their teammates to ensure a successful outcome.

5th Grade-Construct an Animal Pen 2

Continuing with our Minecraft Engineering unit, the students designed and constructed an animal pen for Minecraft farm animals. Students have been getting a lot of experience working in teams and sharing ideas while being sensitive to other teammates. The students had a limited number of supplies to work with, but were able to ask a foreman for additional supplies if needed. We completed our animal pens this week and shared the features of each pen.

STEAM Cycle 15

12/4/2016

Kindergarten-Design a House

The students designed and built one of the three houses described in The Three Little Pigs. Using materials to represent straw, sticks, or bricks, the students constructed a 3-dimensional model. In the following lesson, students will make improvements to their structures before testing them in front of a fan to see if the wolf could blow it down.

1st Grade-Straw, Wood, & Bricks

After listening to the fable The Three Little Pigs, students retold the story including key details. The students answered questions about the characters, major events in the story, and identified the materials used by each of the pigs in constructing their houses. Students will continue to use the terms structure and function as they consider these important concepts in terms of the building materials the pigs chose.

2nd Grade-Pixel Pictures cont./Catch Up

The students learned that pixels are minute area of illumination on a display screen and that when they are placed strategically, they create the images we see. After creating our own pixel pictures, we uploaded a snapshot to a Google Doc. Students used remaining time after completing their document to catch up on any unfinished assignments in the Google Classroom.

3rd Grade-Speedometry 3

The students continued to learn about potential and kinetic energy using Hot Wheels. In this lesson, the students added height to their ramps and learned about transferring energy. With a car at the bottom of the ramp, the students learned how to increase the kinetic energy of one vehicle to push the second vehicle as far as possible.

4th Grade-Getting Loopy

Students repeated actions, learning how to take a series of steps and turn them into a single loop. We began learning with actions and movement, then moved to Code.org for practice using loops when coding.