Week of December 14-18

This week, the 3rd graders were given an engineering design challenge. They had to build a tower to hold up a stuffed cow at least one foot tall using only 50 index cards, two feet of tape, and scissors. Even though not all groups were successful at building the tower, everyone was successful at using the engineering design process to create a plan and improve upon it! Here were two towers that met the criteria.

In 4th grade, some groups figured out how to use loops to make programs repeat. One group even learned how to use a switch block to get the robot to follow a line and move around the edge of a sheet of butcher paper!!!

The 5th graders are working on coming up with essential questions that they want to work on answering in this cycle. There have been so many great ideas - How can I show kids that they can have fun without technology? How can I show people that food can be healthy and still be delicious? How can I improve the selection of books in the Menlo Park library?

These are just a few of the many wonderful questions the students will be exploring.

Week of December 7-11

This week, we began our engineering cycle. I love this cycle because all of the G&T kids get to be together! In 3rd grade, we learned what technology is and what an engineer does. Many students were very surprised to learn that things like flip flops, a bonnet, and a basket are all examples of technology because they are made by people to solve a problem.

In 4th grade, we started to go beyond basics to investigate what a loop does and how it can help us with our baseball challenge. We also continued to add sensors so the robot can detect its environment and respond accordingly.

The 5th graders were introduced to their challenge for the engineering cycle- to identify something that breaks their heart in their lives/in the world and think about possible solutions to these heartbreaks. Students will be using the engineering design process to solve these problems by doing a passion project. They will choose a problem they care about and spend the next couple months asking questions, researching, interviewing, surveying, planning, creating, revising, and improving solutions to the problem. I can't wait to see the amazing things that they come up with!

Week of 11/30-12/4

This week, 3a and 3b turned our classroom into a mall. However, instead of listing prices of items for sale, the students wrote equations with variables that their classmates had to solve in order to figure out the prices. Can you find the value of the foods below?

In 4th grade, we've been adding all types of sensors: color sensors that allow our robots to stop at different colored lines and gyro sensors that can detect angles. We learned about thresholds and how to calculate them using the color sensor. We also added an arm that is controlled by the medium motor. Check out the videos below. It's amazing what our robots are able to do!!!

Our 5th graders completed our unit on computer programming and algebra, and we finally have working games!!! You can play our games if you go to the 5th grade page and click on any of the links. I even have a game up there. Have fun!