STEAM Cycle 23

Kindergarten-Bone Puzzle

As we move through this unit about the structure and function of the human body, the students are following the story of a fictional character named Angelina.  She fell at recess and hurt her arm.  As the story progresses, Angelina visits the hospital to have an x-ray taken of her arm.  The students learned about x-rays and worked through a puzzle of the hand bones.  Each student made a handprint with white paint and will glue the puzzle to their handprint.

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1st Grade-Patterns of the Stars

The students conducted an investigation with a flashlight and some aluminum foil to mimic the night sky and understand why we can only see stars at night.  We also watched an informational video about the life cycle of stars.

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2nd Grade-Changing Earth's Surface

Using the Canvas app, students connected to our PLTW activity and followed a presentation to observe and take notes about the changes water, wind and natural disasters cause to land over time.

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3rd Grade-Traits Through the Generations

As we continue to learn about genes, the students were introduced to 2 identical "parent" plants.  Although the plants look identical, the students learned that each parent plant contributes a dominant or recessive gene.  Students travelled through 8 stations, each representing a phenotype (a trait such as stem length, color, type of leaves, etc.).  At each station, the students determined the genotype that would be passed from each parent creating a dominant or recessive phenotype for the baby plant.  After completing the stations, students used paper cutouts to illustrate the baby plant.

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4th Grade-Data Collection & Display

With experience in how computers store data, students looked at different data sets to make conclusions.  We had an introduction to Tynker, an iPad app that allows students to create their own games and animations using visual blocks to code.  Understanding data sets will be put into practice as the students create a game that will track data and represent that data in a graph.

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 5th Grade-Mystery at School 1

There is an illness spreading at our fictional school.  The students learned about bacteria and viruses as they distinguished between communicable and noncommunicable diseases.