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!

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:

http://flexmath.ck12.org/lesson/algebra/substitute-to-solve-a-system-of-equations/presentation

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!!!

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.

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!

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.