This week, the 3rd graders practiced introducing their Genius Hour video about Coral Reefs and the accompanying Scratch video game they created so they can present it to their homeroom classes.
Category Archives: Videos
1st Grade Shares Animal Research with Chatter Pix
The 1st graders made clay versions of the animals they chose from the countries they are researching. They then used the ChatterPix app to relate what they had learned about the animals. Take a look at their work!
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!
2nd Grade Makes Scarecrows
The 2nd graders practiced the Substitute part of S.C.A.M.P.E.R. by substituting building pieces for the straw in a scarecrow. You can see some of their inventions in the short video below.
The students also learned more about tarantulas by using the PebbleGo resource from the library, and filling in a Depth and Complexity research sheet. After a little more practice, they will soon be ready to research their own choice of animals.
Of course, after introducing the Zoombinis app to the whole class two weeks ago, the students were eager to try it on their own. There is a lot of problem solving, patience, and observation required for this game – but it’s fun!
3rd Grade Re-Invents the Hay Wagon!
3rd grade reviewed the S.C.A.M.P.E.R. creative thinking tool this week. Then, they were given the challenge to combine a hay wagon with something else to make a new invention. The students went next door to our makerspace, B.O.S.S. HQ, to use some of our building tools. You can see the results below, including a short video where they explain their inventions.
They also used augmented reality to learn more about the brain, and said their goodbyes to Piper (also known as Hairy Copper), our borrowed Chilean Rose Tarantula.
3rd Grade Tackle Cubelets Challenges
Jordan is our 3rd grade blogger for the week, and Keely is our photographer.
Today in GT we used robots called Cubelets.They were very cool robots.The way you use Cubelets is by connecting them together. There are lots of different types of Cubelets like action or sensing. Another thing we talked about is PMI,CAF, growth mindsets,and systems thinking. CAF means consider all factors. PMI means plus minus and interesting.Growth mindset means to not let anything stop you from what you want to accomplish even if it seems to hard.
2nd Grade Completes Biomimicry Projects
All of the 2nd graders have completed their Biomimicry projects, and you can see the remainder of them below. Here is a link to one last video that was a little too large to include in our playlist.
Most of the students are also done with building K’nex bridges. We got an extra kit, so we could get some of the parts that we have been missing. One group was so motivated that they built a bascule bridge, which was not even one of the requirements!
Another fun activity that the students did today was “Measurement Dot-to-Dot.” Instead of the usual dot-to-dot, these pages required the students to connect only the dots that were a certain distance from each other. This is a great way to work on measurement skills!
4th Grade Paints with Sphero
We have a new blogger this week, Nathan. Our new photographer is Katie. Alex also contributed some of the video. You can see a video of the Spheros painting at the end of this post.
GT highlights of the day!
We got back together with our spheros Newton and Einstein which were ready for a fun new challenge. All 6 GT kids were split into teams of 3.Challenge 1 was to brainstorm a shape or a shape pattern. Team one chose a triforce and team 2 chose the 6 pointed star. Challenge 2 was to slather paint all over the sphero and let it draw the shape your team programed. Both did not turn out as planned but were art in the eyes of both teams. To finish the day we worked on our virtual math museums. Finally we looked at the com.google and pacman on google maps!
2nd Graders Work on Biomimicry Projects
Almost half of the 2nd graders finished their biomimicry commercials today. They invented new products based on animal adaptations they learned about, and made commercials for their products. They were allowed to choose the app they would use to create their final videos. You can view the completed projects below.
All of the students have finished building beam bridges with the K’Nex and are moving on to the slightly-more-complicated arch bridges. It’s interesting to see the groups choose which type of arch bridge they want to construct; many of them are selecting the most difficult one!
The students also continued to work on their math logic puzzles, and showed great “grit” as they pushed through the challenging ones.
Two of the videos were a bit too long to embed on the blog, but you can access them here: Heater Blanket, Weather Scanner.
3rd Grade Creates Digital Versions of Their Zoom Pics
Today’s post is brought to you by Alexa, our blogger, and Luke, our photographer.
Today on the iPads, we did ‘’Would You Rathers?’’. All of the “Would You Rathers?” involved math because all of them had numbers that you had to multiply,add, etc. We also made slideshows that showed pictures of places or things that were re-zoomed. Re-zoom means to make a picture, then on your next picture you would draw the same thing, but smaller with more things on the sides.We also thought of a problem we had, then we came up with five why’s. After that we came up with the answer to all of the questions and came up with a possible solution to fix the problem we had.
