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!