Parents, you should be receiving an email from SignupGenius again for the March STEM Engineering Challenges happening again on Thursday and Friday the 24th and 25th. Your help is invaluable! And speaking of engineering projects, here are the videos from last week's second round of challenges. As was the case for the first round of challenges, groups met with some measure of success but also some spectacular failure. We continue to make the focus on having fun, learning to persevere, and working with a team. The extra lessons are working within a budget and best attempts at reaching the goal. Fifth grade's challenge was... Objective: Design and build a two-section, moveable robotic arm with that can lift an alien object (cup) off the surface (table) of the planet. Mission Brief: Once a rover lands on an alien surface, it must be able to perform science experiments for us remotely. We want this rover to be able to collect samples, take pictures, and monitor the environment. Your portion of the mission today is to design a robotic arm that can reach out and pick up an object and bring it safely back to you. This proved to be much more challenging than they thought as you will see in the video... Fourth graders had the following mission brief given to them: "You have now figured out how to build a rocket to leave the surface of Earth. The next step is to land on the moon. Now NASA needs you to design and test a shock-absorbing system that can help a craft get to the moon and land on the moon and safely deliver two astronauts for exploration without injury to them or their craft." Their craft was a 6-ounce cup and their astronauts were two large marshmallows. You'll notice in this video that our high school helpers also had a chance to try this challenge when they hung out with me during my planning time between 4th and 5th grades... The last group on each day are the third graders. Their task was to "Design & build the framework (6 X 6 X 6 inches) for a new capsule for astronauts that can hold up under the extreme pressure of space (math textbooks.)" We had fun making sure each structure was tested to the fullest (in other words until it was completely destroyed!) Check out the laughs we had with this project...
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With the shortened school week and our 2nd engineering challenges, we didn't have too much time for new instruction this week, but we did have fun. Here is a quick updates on day one of the challenges for each grade level... Fourth grade's mission this session is, "You have now figured out how to build a rocket to leave the surface of Earth. The next step is to land on the moon. Now NASA needs you to design and test a shock-absorbing system that can help a craft get to the moon and land on the moon and safely deliver two astronauts for exploration without injury to them or their craft." Check out some of the pictures of our planning and building beginning. (There was some major espionage going on today too!) Fifth grade formed their teams today and began their mission, "Once a rover lands on an alien surface, it must be able to perform science experiments for us remotely. We want this rover to be able to collect samples, take pictures, and monitor the environment. Your portion of the mission today is to design a robotic arm that can reach out and pick up an object and bring it safely back to you." The students must craft a robotic arm to pick up a cup holding 100 grams. Love listening to their problem solving and conflict resolution as they try to work with their teams! Check out a couple of shots from today... And the last group of the day were the third graders whose objective was, "Design & build the framework (6 X 6 X 6 inches) for a new capsule for astronauts that can hold up under the extreme pressure of space (math textbooks)." Interesting to see how cardboard can be used in so many different ways! I also love hearing the kid stress about a budget and begin to understand how important it is to make a plan before blowing said budget! There are even more pictures on the photos page of the website, but here are a couple of teasers... One last note, if your child is interested in learning more about the history of our space program and how our astronauts and aerospace engineers have problem solved in real life, I have been watching "Secret Space Escapes" on the Discovery Science channel. Their website also has many of the episodes online. Here is a link to the video 5th grade will watch tomorrow to understand how important robotic arms are to the space program and how they can be used to save lives:
http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/secret-space-escapes/secret-space-escapes-video/iss-solar-panel-rip-2/_ Stay tuned for next week's update on our 2nd Space STEM Challenge. Math students will be participating on Thursday and Friday, February 18 & 19, in our next engineering build-off. Thanks to those of you who have already offered to volunteer. I could still use a couple of 4th grade parents if you have a little time to volunteer: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0c4fa4ae2ea6fd0-stem_ Last week, the fifth grade students and I took advantage of our technology and participated in a Mystery Skype on Friday. With a Mystery Skype, the two classes don't know where each other are, and basically play a game of 20 questions using their geography skills to determine the other class' location. Turned out our partner class was from Charlotte, North Carolina - home of the Carolina Panthers! My friend Whitney Godfrey teaches 5th grade science at River Gate Elementary there. We organized the Skype in honor of our Super Bowl teams. Mrs. Godfrey and I had a couple of challenges then related to the big game: First, the winning state's class would receive handmade homework passes from the losing state's class (to be used for one assignment in the future.) Second, we did a coin drive just for this last week. We'll pool the money tomorrow and all the funds will go to the winning quarterback's foundation. Since that was the Broncos (YEAH!!) the winning Foundation is Manning's Peyback Foundation. Here are a couple of pictures from our end as we were Skyping... Fourth grade math students have begun a new unit this week on fractions. We'll be exploring equivalent fractions, comparing fractions, adding & subtracting fractions, and multiplying fractions by a whole number. This unit will lead into the next study which will be converting decimals, fractions, and percents. As part of our kick off today, we had some fun exploring fractions with pattern blocks and changing the whole to see how that changes the value of the shapes. Check out these engaged learners as they draw and learn... Not to be left out, third grade Knowledge Peak students all came down to meet with me on Tuesday for their affective goal review. Since their goals this year are all related to better peer relationships and learning how to work cooperatively, I gave them a challenge. Each group of three got 10 sheets of newspaper, five paperclips, a cup, and masking tape. There were fruit snacks taped on the wall and they had to figure out how to work as a group to devise a way to get the fruit snacks off the wall before they could eat them. It turned out to be a harder challenge than they thought (and we had such a limited time, unfortunately) but thanks to some great time reflecting on their group dynamics, everyone was a winner as they turned in their reflections this week. Again here are some pictures of your children having some fun! For more pictures from each of these, check out the photos page of the website:
http://traceybean.weebly.com/photos.html Couple of quick announcements for the next couple of weeks... Tuesday, February 9, is the 4th Math Olympiad for 4th and 5th grade math students. Thursday & Friday, February 18 & 19, are the next STEM Challenges. Sign-up Genius for parent volunteers was sent this week. Check your email inbox. Third grade language arts has begun again this week and will continue for the month of February. The students are leading and participating in literature circles based on Andrew Clements books that are about school. Your child is either reading The School Story, The Report Card, or Frindle. We had our first meetings today in small groups and the kids did a GREAT job participating in good discussions about our novels. Each week the kids will have 4-5 chapters to read and a job to complete. Their job will be either director when they write two "deep" questions for their team to discuss, summarizer when they write a 5-8 sentence summary of just what we read, word wizard where they define the two words given each week, or illustrator when students must graphically represent the chapters we read and write two sentences to explain. Mondays will be an in-class work day and Thursdays will be the official meeting day. In between, we will be doing some reader's theater and creativity tasks. Check with your child and see what their job is for next week's reading. The snow day changed our plans a little this week, as I was suppose to meet with all of the grade level gifted students to touch base on their affective goals from their ALP for the year. 5th graders' goals are based on healthy risk taking. We read stories of famous mistakes that turned out to be a success (ask them about the stories behind popsicles, hot dogs, or sticky notes.) 4th graders' goals are based on study skills and organization. We discussed test taking strategies. We also had some fun coming up with test taking tip posters that we can post during PARCC testing in April (they were super creative with slogans like "PARCC - the playground for your mind!") I will meet with 3rd graders next week to discuss their peer relationship goals and do a fun activity to work on team building. Stay tuned next week for pictures! What an amazing experience our first STEM Challenge was! The parent help was invaluable too! We had some great creativity going on in class to meet their objectives. The students worked very hard to communicate and cooperate with their teammates. There were challenges and frustrations and success and failures. Such is the life of an engineer! We also had 13 Fossil Ridge seniors come and help on Fridays with the building, testing, and reflecting. In your students' Friday Folder should be the copy of their reflection from the build. I played around with IMovie (forgive the cheesy music!) and created some videos for each grade level that are the pictures and test videos from our fun days. Check out the videos below and the pictures are uploaded by grade on the photos page. Enjoy! |
Tracey BeanWerner Elementary Archives
May 2018
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