Friday, January 27, 2017

Week of January 23-27

This week, the 3rd grade environmental engineers continued to move through the engineering design process to imagine possible methods to clean an oil spill. After coming up with a couple ideas independently, they shared these ideas with their team members and came up with one plan to implement first. These plans are scored using 3 criteria: cost score (we have a budget of $20 million), shore score (whether oil reached the shore), and ecosystem impact score (how much oil was left in the river). After we evaluate our first processes, we will ask more questions about what worked well and what didn't work, and we will improve our designs.

In 4th grade, we added arms to our robots that are powered using the medium motor. We learned that negative power moves the arm down, while positive power moves it up. We used this arm to move objects of different sizes from place to place.


In 5th grade, we went through the steps of the creative problem solving process to try to solve problems at Menlo. We brainstormed ideas to waste less food in the cafeteria, have people move through the hallways more quietly and safely, make our bathrooms cleaner, and more! It's exciting to think that we can actually make a difference at our school!



Thursday, January 19, 2017

Week of January 16-20

This week, the 3rd graders continued to test materials and evaluate their usefulness in cleaning up an oil spill. We also did some research to find out what materials are used in real oil spills and how they compare to the materials we used in our model. Now we are ready to begin imagining and planning our oil spill cleanup processes!

In 4th grade, we had many robots successfully complete the obstacle course! You can check out an example below. Next, we are adding an arm attached to another motor so we can move things around the room!

In 5th grade, we pitched the inventions we created from a part of the technology we dismantled last week. We realized that the inventions that received the most interest from investors were the ones that were original and appealed to a large audience. We also did some research on the inventing styles of Edison and Tesla and looked at how they used FFOE (fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration) when inventing. Next, we talked about steps in the creative problem solving process. We identified a problem affecting the students at Menlo and began gathering facts and info about the problem in order to prepare to brainstorm possible solutions. That is what we will work on next week.

Friday, January 13, 2017

Week of January 9-13


This week, the 3rd graders made their presentations to the mayor of Greentown (me) about what was causing the pollution problems in Greentown and what should be done about it. We learned that pollution can travel from one place to another because of water and wind and that environmental engineers test soil and water samples in order to identify potential problems in the environment. 3b also started to investigate materials that could possibly be used in our oil spill cleanup process. 
These environmental engineers are testing materials to use in an oil spill cleanup process.




In 4th grade, we used what we learned about different types of curved moves to work on the obstacle course challenge and the baseball challenge. Some groups realized that a loop block is a great shortcut when we want to repeat the same moves multiple times!


In 5th grade, we had an exciting week of dismantling technology to see what's inside. We realized that many of our gadgets have a circuit board controlling all of the functions. We made a web to show the supporting technology making up our item, and then we chose something from the web to come up with a new invention. We talked about invention by reduction - like how someone took away a wheel from a bicycle to make a unicycle or took away the pedals to make a balance bike.
Mr. Joe helped us dismantle technology!
What's inside a cell phone?
Hard at work dismantling a remote







Friday, January 6, 2017

Week of January 3-6

This week, our third graders were environmental engineers hired by Mayor Higgins of Greentown to investigate problems with animals and plants dying in the pond and garden. We used pH strips to test soil and water samples from various locations around town and compared this data to data taken three years ago. We noticed that some areas had become much more acidic, causing problems in the pond, while other areas had become more basic, causing harm to the garden. We then made visits to the locations in question to learn more about what was going on. Now we are working on making recommendations to Mayor Higgins about how to solve these problems and prevent future problems with the ecosystem in Greentown.
samples we tested with pH strips

In 4th grade, we learned a lot more about how the programming blocks work. We learned that making the power negative moves the robot backwards. Some groups began learning about the various types of turns the robot can make by adjusting the power of the left and right motors. Now they are working on programming the robot to move through an obstacle course using these turns.


In 5th grade, we discussed how some inventions (like the flushing toilet) were invented way ahead of their time, and they didn't have the supporting technology to make them really useful. We made a tech web to show all of the supporting technology necessary to make Gorilla Glass and other inventions successful, and we realized that many of these webs included electricity as a necessary supporting technology. We then did a little research about electromagents and how they are used in inventions and created our own electromagnet!
We found that when we wrapped the wire around the nail more times, it became stronger and could pick up more objects-like in this pic!