4th Grade Makes Tessellation Art

I was very impressed by the tessellation art that the students made today.  They have incredible imaginations!  They also participated in a very deep discussion about Tuck Everlasting and worked on more Hands-On-Equations lessons.  Here are their reflections about the day:

Cristian Instead algebra, I would choose to do tessellations because there are so many possibilities.
Connor Learning about prejudices reminded me of the people I’ve pre-judged and learned that I was wrong.
Max From what I learned today about tessellations, I can infer that Escher may have used the same method.
Luke Based on what I know about algebra, I would recommend to never give up and keep on trying.
Jordan Today’s lesson about algebra makes me wonder what the world today would do if we didn’t have math.
Keely I think the man in the yellow suit is important because the author has spent a lot of time describing him.

4th Grade Considers All Factors

The 4th graders reviewed the CoRT Thinking tool that requires you to consider all factors before making a decision.  They brainstormed questions they would need answered before deciding whether or not they should drink from a fountain that would make them immortal.  Then we read some more of Tuck Everlasting to get more ideas.  They reviewed Hand On Equations by using videos in Google Classroom, and brainstormed problems at school they think they might be able to solve.  Here are their thoughts:

 

Cristian After today, I could prove algebra is like tessellations because they both need to balance and repeat without changing.
Connor Today’s lesson about C.A.F. makes me wonder what would happen if you applied that to everything in your life.
Max Learning about brainstorming problems the school has reminded me of our discussion about SSR time.
Luke Based on what I know about tessellations, I would recommend trying to make them because they are fun and unique.
Jordan From what I learned today about tessellations, I can infer that Escher created mathematical masterpieces.
Keely I think CAF is important because it is a good tool to use when you have to make a hard decision.

4th Grade Learns about Tessellations

The 4th graders explored tessellations this week, as well as doing their report card self-reflections, and reading and discussing Tuck Everlasting.  They also avidly watched our 3d printer hard at work!

Here are some of their reflections from today:

 

Cristian After today i can prove that a tessellation is like life with these facts, everything in life fits together perfectly and there are no gaps in life.
Connor Today’s lesson about Tuck Everlasting made me think about what it would be like if I could live forever without physical pain.
Luke I think tessellations are important because everything fits together. They leave no gaps and can be really unique. They can be used in art or on buildings.   
Jordan Learning about tessellations reminded me of a puzzle because every little piece fits together perfectly and there are no gaps.

4th Grade Learns Tinkercad

Like the 3rd graders, the 4th grade GT class also got a tutorial on Tinkercad this week.  Using the browser-based design program, the students were able to learn the basic tools and to apply them to creating small 3d printed gifts for their teachers.  We weren’t able to complete the prints for all of them during GT time, so some of the students were generous enough to use their recess time to paint the gifts on Thursday before giving them away.  Next semester, they will be ready to begin some other masterpieces on our new printer!

December 2015 Updates

Wow, this week has flown by, and our blog posts are way behind!  Part of the problem was that the Edublogs site was down, but the other part is that we just haven’t had time.  The students and I have been super busy, and lots of great things are happening!

Here are some brief summaries of what is going on in the GT Classroom!

  • 1st and 2nd grades both participated in the Hour of Code in GT on Monday.  The 1st graders tried to code our Dash robot to travel from North to South America as we continue to study the continents.  The 2nd graders used an app called, “Box Island,” to learn some basics about sequences, loops, and conditional statements (we didn’t call them that in class, but they definitely figured out how to use them!)
  • The 3D printer so generously donated to our classroom by the parents is up and running!  We had a little glitch with connecting to the district network, but now it is working like a champ!  The 2nd-5th grade classes will have opportunities to design for it coming up soon! (Funny detail – the Aquanet hairspray was included in the box.  It’s used to make the build plate sticky!)

Photo Dec 10, 2 54 41 PM

  • 5th grade was invited to stream live to the District’s Principal’s meeting yesterday.  They got to show the principals how we do Socratic Dialogue in our classroom, and Odin got to ask our Superintendent, Dr. Gottardy, a question, “How do you balance safety and freedom when making decisions for our schools?”  Below is a picture of how our class was viewed by Mr. Bloomer, principal at Bradley.

Socratic Dialogue

    • The 3rd – 5th grade teams worked on their missions so their videos could be submitted by the 12/10/15 deadline to the Wonder League Robotics Competition.  We had four teams total, and it has been so fun to see how the different teams handled each mission!  It will definitely be clear to the judges that the students took control of the programming and “flair” as no two teams did the same thing!  I am embedding their competition videos below.  I had a couple of hours of panic last night while I tried to stitch all of the videos together for our submission because my home computer was so slow – but all of the videos did get submitted before the deadline!

4th and 5th Graders Learn What it Means to Persevere!

The 4th and 5th graders all worked on Mission 4 for the Wonder League Robotics Competition this week.  It has really challenged their brains, and they are learning from many mistakes.  It’s so gratifying to see them cheer when something goes right, but we also had so moments of laughter this week when one program went a bit awry as you will see from the video below!

4th Grade is Up to the Challenge!

The 4th graders are working hard on the missions for the Wonder League Robotics Competition.  It was great to see the group of 6 (Welcome, Keely!) synergize to complete the first 3 missions!  The challenges are difficult, and you definitely need to have a growth mindset to complete them.

We did not have time to complete our usual reflections today, but here are some photos of the team (The Ticking Timing Tigers) hard at work.

4th Grade Learns about Figurative Language

Hooray – our blog is back up and running!  We had a short day this week due to Early Dismissal, so I am going to give you a little bit about this week and last week.

Here are screenshots of the incredible personification poems the students wrote to honor the veterans. Congratulations to Max H. on having his poem, “Thankfulness,” selected to be read at the Churchill Veteran’s Day Ceremony.

Here was Connor’s great summary of last week’s class:

“We started GT finishing our poems for Church Hill honoring veterans and soldiers. After that we learned about the one problem for GT 6th grade. So we tried to represent that by doing difficult math problems. To end the day we played awesome Zoombinis.”  

This week, the students started preparing for the Wonder League Robotics Competition and practiced identifying more types of figurative language.

4th Grade Works on Personification Poetry

According to our students, here is what happened in 4th grade GT this week:

Cristian: Today in GT we looked at some poems and tried to figure out what all the poems had in common/the rules of poetry. WE decided that all of the poems lines of words are linked to the main idea. We also decided that all poems have a rythm.

Connor: Today we learned about personification. personification is a type of figuritive language. it is putting a word as a living thing like what it thinks what it dreams what it remembers. to do that we entered the Churchill contest of poetry. we watched sad army videos about warriors fighting to give us an idea of the deep meaning of the sacerfices that the soldiers made.

Jordan: Today we played “Zoombinis” again but today was different because it seemed like everyone in class overcame a challenge in the game.

Here are our photos from our photographer, Connor!

 

4th Grade Skypes with Game Designer

Like third grade, the 4th graders practiced S.C.A.M.P.E.R. this week.  They worked on finding another use for hay wagons besides hay rides.  One group made a mobile hay wagon water park.  Another group made a “Power Point.” The Power Point was actually a moving power plant that could travel anywhere that needs electricity.

Cristian said, “S.C.A.M.P.E.R. is for turning ordinary things into what you never thought they could be.”

According to Max, “S.C.A.M.P.E.R. is a tool for being creative.  You can use it to go above and beyond.”

4th grade also got the opportunity to Skype with one of the designers of the Zoombinis app. She really tied all that we have learned about creativity in GT to the real-world applications of game design.  According to Luke, he also learned, “A lot of hard work goes into it.”

The next time you play a video game, think about all of the hard work that is involved in planning each move you make!