3rd Grade Creates Robot Choreography

For their Hour of Code activity in GT this week, the 3rd graders worked on programming the Dash Robots in our class – Dash Potato and Dasharoni.  They enjoyed trying to get the timing to work for the robot dance moves, and it looks like they did a pretty good job.  Thanks to Daniel for his great videography of the final project!

1st Grade Plays Robot Turtles and Kodable

The GT 1st graders did 2 activities for their Hour of Code this week: Kodable and Robot Turtles. Kodable is an iPad app that teaches programming with mazes through which you need to direct a “Fuzz.” Robot Turtles is a great board game that allows the students to use cards with arrows to guide their turtle to collect a gem.

The students also recorded themselves telling their snow globe stories, and we put the audio with their snow globe movies using iMovie.

On Friday, they did some more creative thinking by combining two holidays to make a new one. We will share more of those next week!

5th Grade Participates in a Socratic Smackdown

Today’s blog post is brought to you by our new blogger, Aya, as well as our new photographer, Emmett. Emmett took some video of our Smackdown and interviewed some students about it. I will try to post those videos soon!

Do you know how to code? Well, the fifth grade GT sure does! Today in GT, we got to program a game randomly. After that, we got to show our games off to our friends. Later, we got to have a Socratic Smackdown. We read The Giver and had to answer the question, “Who would you want to be in The Giver?” We got points for asking probing questions and lost points for interrupting. The competition was challenging, but fun too! At the end of the day we did a sudoku puzzle, and a Christmas carol puzzle. Did you know that another way to say Silent Night is “Nocturnal time span of unbroken quietness?” Well it is! We changed jobs today so make sure you check out the pictures taken by our fabulous photographer down below. Thanks!

4th Grade Describes their Hour of Code Experience

Today’s blog post is brought to you by Elizabeth (author) and Trent (photographer).

Today in fourth grade GT we went down to only seven students. We miss her and wish that she didn’t have to leave. All of the GT students wanted to say hello to her.  We changed jobs as well. We are reading Tuck Everlasting, and today we read all the way up to a murder. Mrs.Eicolts really is a great and challenging teacher. There is nothing negative to say about her. Today she surprised us with an IPad app called Hopscotch for Hour of Code. We coded a food fight game which was a lot of fun to code and play. We were asked to write what we thought about Hour of Code using figurative language. These are some of the things that we came up with…

“Hour of Code was a football game with teammates patting you on the back when you worked your way to success.” Elizabeth

“When we did Hour of Code, I felt like a genius.” Nathan

“Hour of Code was like Black Friday.  At first you don’t quite know what you’re looking for, but you always find it!” Alex

“Hopscotch is a spark, ready to ignite with creativity, dreams, imagination, and fun!” Katie

“Programming is as fun as playing with a Bottle-Nosed dolphin.” Timothy
Thank you for reading and have a fantastic week!

3rd Grade Sees Systems in Action

Today’s blog post is brought to you by Luke, and Jordan is our student photographer!

Hi! This is Luke L., and I am bringing you the Blog Report today. In 3rd grade G.T., we did hour of code, Hopscotch, and we got our monkey to make a square with different colors and sizes. The monkey is a character that we chose from Hopscotch. In Hopscotch, we watched the paddle ball video. It was very entertaining! We also helped the first graders with hour of code in the computer lab. They really enjoyed it and cannot wait to do it again. We worked on logic puzzles. Third grade G.T. looked at the ants expand into an ant farm. This has been a three week process. At first, the ants were just peeking in the ant farm. Now, they are crawling around everywhere. It was a great week in G.T.!

2nd Grade Makes Hopscotch Food Fights

2nd Grade GT students participated in Hour of Code today by using an iPad app called Hopscotch.  We did a video tutorial that was specially created for Hour of Code week, and it showed the students how to make a “Food Fight” game.

This was a particularly complex tutorial with many, many steps.  I was very proud of how well the students listened and solved problems as we went through the procedures.  They caught on very quickly to some mathematical terms (like “x” and “y” axis) that were new to them.

I also really enjoyed the extra features they added when they were finished. Several of them personalized their games by adding different programming blocks after we got the main part done.  I’ve embedded a couple of videos below.

1st Grade’s Participation in the Hour of Code

If you have been reading the other posts from this week, then you know that the GT classes have all taken part in the Hour of Code campaign going on this week. As part of Computer Science Education Week, kids all over the world are learning about computer programming.

Because the 1st graders had not been introduced to programming yet, I eased them into it with a great board game called Robot Turtles that I got from Kickstarter.  (You can read more about the game on my professional blog.)

We talked about “Rules” last week, so programming fit in very nicely with our curriculum.  The students learned the rules of Robot Turtle, and coding, on Tuesday.  Today, they applied what they had learned to an app called Kodable on the iPads.  They caught on very quickly!

5th Grade’s Hour of Code

Today’s post is brought to you by Aubrie:

Today in G.T. we focused mainly on programming. We participated in a worldwide event called ‘Hour of Code’, where we programmed online robots using certain commands. We used two websites: ‘Scratch’ and ‘Hopscotch’. Using Scratch, we made moving holiday cards, and with Hopscotch, we programmed our robots to do the challenges Mrs. Eichholz gave us.

In addition, we watched a new Kid President holiday video. It talked about how Christmas is not about giving gifts you can wrap, but giving love.*The video is attached below.*
A few of us also got to watch Anole the green anole lizard eat a cricket, and all of us got to see him sideways, holding on to the wall.

 

4th Grade Participates in the Hour of Code – For a Few Hours!

This blog post is brought to you by Athasi:

Today in GT we participated in Hour of Code! Except instead of one hour of code, we did a full GT  class of code! We split the class in half, and one half did Scratch, and the other half did Hopscotch, and then we switched. Scratch is a free website created by M.I.T., where you can create programs, and share them with other people. Hopscotch is very similar to Scratch, except it’s an app for the iPad. When we were doing Scratch, we were supposed to create a holiday card. When we were doing Hopscotch, we were supposed to make an object disappear  and make another one become bigger when we clapped. At the end of the class, Mrs. Eichholtz told us that she might set up a programming station. I am very excited about this, because I really enjoyed today’s class.

If the embedded video below does not show, click here for an example of one of our Scratch Holiday cards!

3rd Grade Learns Scratch for the Hour of Code

Because this week is Computer Science Education Week, I want to make sure all of the grade levels get a chance to participate in the Hour of Code campaign.  One of our 3rd graders, Roman, was kind enough to show the class how to do a  project using the open-source programming language from M.I.T., Scratch.  This was a great introduction to Scratch for the other students, who had not seen it before.  Once Roman gave the class a lesson on the basics, they all got on laptops and did a tutorial created especially for students participating in the Hour of Code.  They designed their own holiday cards.  I recorded video of their cards “in action”, and you can view them at the links below:

Katie

Roman

Timothy

Anna