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?