Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Week of November 23-25

In 3rd grade, we learned how to use the substitution method to solve equations that go together.  Although we were tempted to use guess and check for some of the more difficult problems, by the end of class, we realized that we never had to guess when using the substitution method.  Here is a link to some practice problems using substitution:




In 4th grade, we learned how to move objects using the medium motor, and some groups added a color sensor and programmed the robot to stop at a black line.

The 5th graders learned about piecewise functions and conditionals which will allow their players to move in different ways depending on what key is pressed. Our games are almost complete!!!

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Week of November 16-20

This week, class 4a had a special guest speaker named Asok Thangaraj. He is the parent of a second grade student at Menlo Park, and he really enjoys teaching students STEM related topics. He works at Goldman Sachs as a Senior Engineer- VP in the Technology Division, and when he saw that we were doing robotics and programming, he thought it would be a great fit! He taught us all about artificial intelligence and about how the Turing Test was designed to determine if a computer can exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to a human. You can learn more from his slideshow below:

Presentation on Artificial Intelligence

Mr. Thangaraj teaches us about artificial intelligence.

Friday, November 13, 2015

Week of November 9-13

This week my 3rd graders continued to solve problems with two variables using an organized list and guess and test.  We are getting much better at making educated guesses and using our first guess to make a better second guess!

In 4th grade, we completed the Baseball Challenge (see the video below) using our knowledge from our straight move and tank move tutorials.




In 5th grade, we learned about a new datatype called Boolean that returns a true or false value. This will help us keep our players on the screen! We are very excited to have working games very soon!

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Week of November 2-4

This week, my 3rd graders continued working on solving problems with 2 (and even 3) variables by making an organized list and using guess and test and by drawing a picture. We talked about old fashioned general stores and how they sold penny candy. Then we tried to figure out the values of certain candies by looking at two equations that go together. We also discussed ways to eliminate certain items from our lists (items that cost 0 cents, items that give a negative difference, items that give too small or too large a difference).

In 4th grade, we tried to get our robots to move around a baseball diamond by thinking about how to get the robot to move straight a specific distance and what type of turn is necessary. We used our knowledge of circumference and different types of turns from our previous lessons to help us.

In 5th grade, we finally began to animate our video games using functions that change the value of the x-coordinates of our dangers and targets.