Friday, December 22, 2017

Week of December 18-22

***Calling all 5th grade inventors!!! The 2018 Young Scientist Challenge is now open! Click HERE to find out how to enter.***

This week, the 3rd graders learned about ecosystems. We created a model food web to show how the living and nonliving things in an ecosystem are connected. Every single organism in our web was connected to the river in some way. This helped us understand how much devastation an oil spill can cause!

In 4th grade, we worked on programming our robots to move straight (forward and backward) and some groups began exploring curved moves. We learned that there are different modes you can use to tell the robot what to do. For example, you can use degree mode, rotation mode, on for seconds, and more to move the robot a certain distance. We used our math skills to figure out that one rotation is equal to 360 degrees. Some groups even found the circumference of the wheel in order to figure out how to get the robot to go a certain distance!

In 5th grade, we went on an invention hunt around the school and identified inventions as either type II (known problem with unknown method to solve it and unknown solution - like fans) or type III (unknown problem with unknown method to solve it and unknown solution - like the Promethean Board). We discussed how inventors have to be observant problem-finders and think up ideas that people didn't even know they needed. Some classes then learned about the 4 steps in the inventive process: idea, invention, innovation, improvement. Our challenge was to take the invention of cardboard and create an innovation and improvement using that invention. We will continue to work on this after the break.

Friday, December 15, 2017

Week of December 11-15

This week, our third grade engineers examined pictures of an ecosystem from 50 years ago and today. Their challenge was to notice what's changed and figure out why those changes have happened. We realized that the birds disappeared, and without birds to eat them, the insects and fish increased. This caused the plants to start to decrease. We learned that everything in an ecosystem is interconnected, and when one change occurs, many more changes happen as a result!

The 4th graders finished building their robots and began programming! We are starting to see how the blocks have different modes and parameters that affect the behavior of the robot. We are excited to see all the amazing things we can program our robots to do!


Students are busy building their robots!

Our 5th grade inventors learned about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how inventions come from trying to meet people's needs. We had a lively debate about what is more important: things we need to survive or things we need for happiness. We came to the agreement that our basic needs must be met first, but that happiness is also very important for our survival. We then tried to create inventions out of wood (popsicle sticks) to meet each level of human need.
Students create shelters, weapons, trophies, and more items to meet their tribe's needs!

Friday, December 8, 2017

Week of December 4-8

This week began our engineering units! The third graders kicked off the cycle with an engineering design challenge, build a tower at least one foot tall to support a stuffed cow. The catch: they could only use 50 index cards and two feet of tape! We learned an important lesson; engineers fail all the time. The important thing is being able to learn from our mistakes! By the end of the challenge, we all had a better idea of how we could improve our designs by making the index cards into stronger shapes like triangles and cylinders. Check out our creations below!




In 4th grade, we held our probability carnival and got a chance to play each other's games. The students did a terrific job of making games that appeared fair but were actually slightly unfair. Check out some pics and video of the carnival below! We also started our engineering unit by talking about robots v. machines and some examples of real robots in our world. We are very excited to finish building and start programming our EV3 robots!


Shout-out to Reeti for making this hat!


In 5th grade, we began our unit on inventions by thinking about qualities of a good inventor. We agreed that things like creativity, perseverance, and patience are just a few important qualities that an inventor should possess. We then learned about the differences between divergent and convergent thinking and debated when each one would be more useful. Finally, we took E. Paul Torrance's test of creativity by brainstorming uses of a paper clip (fluency), categorizing the items on our list (flexibility), choosing the most unique one (originality), and creating a one minute commercial to give a detailed description of the wacky use of a paper clip (elaboration). Go to our 5th grade page to see all of the commercials! 
The pocket scratcher

Does changing a flat tire require convergent or divergent thinking?



Friday, December 1, 2017

Week of November 27-December 1

This week, the 3rd graders finally decided which movie studio to work for. After looking at a lot of data about movie ratings and profits, they all decided to work for Pixar. They used their data to explain that Pixar had better overall ratings and a higher net profit than Dreamworks in recent years. Their final project is to choose a career that they are interested in and show how math is used in that career by creating word problems for their classmates to share. This will be due next week (the first week of engineering).

In 4th grade, we finalized our carnival games, making sure they are slightly unfair so we can make a profit. Next week, we will invite students to come and play our games! We will also start our engineering unit on Lego robotics!

The 5th graders learned about piecewise functions that will allow different results based on what key is pressed. This will enable our player to move up when the up arrow is hit and down when the down arrow is hit. The remaining code to get our games working is shared on our 5th grade page. Click on the links below to play some of the games the students have created! More games will be added to our 5th grade page.

Zachary's game
Gabriella's game