Middle Quest

This week we worked on engineering our own basketball goals.  

This week we had some technical difficulties, so while we worked on vowel sounds and sight words in class, I did not send a packet home this week because we didn't fully get to enjoy the story.  We'll try again next week! 

This week, we focused on lines and how to show movement with lines.  We worked on a cool art project that showed movement with our diagonal lines.  We also continued to work on our tetrahedron. 

Today we started working on our tetrahedron.  We learned some important skills, but we were able to complete two layers!  We'll keep going on this and adding to it a little each week.  The class decided to keep working on it even after we are finished reading All of the Above, so by the end of the year, it could be HUGE!
We also had some open STEM time, which is always fun!

Today we worked on our radial design sculptures and those are truly beautiful!  They are on display on my instagram, but also at the church.  A few students need one more week on those, but we'll probably move on to other projects next week :) 

We continued working on our radial paper sculptures and boy are they beautiful!  Many of the students are increasing their complexity and design and they are stunning! We will work on these for one more week and then we will begin working on STEM projects that are aligned to All of the Above (tetrahedrons).   

Today we worked on radial design and radial symmetry (including repeating patterns).  We started our paper relief sculpture and they are going to look really neat when they are finished!  We learned three new folding/origami designs.  We just started the planning phases, so we'll keep working on it next week.  

Today we discussed Rotational Symmetry and how to achieve it.  We made beautiful paper ornaments using graph paper and rotational symmetry.  Next week, we'll be creating Christmas circuits (I'm very excited about it!)

We made camera obscuras today!  We were excited when we were able to get them to work.  Some students made several.  We found they worked best when we looked out the window! We also worked on creating tangrams.  I challenged students to build a perfect square with their shapes.  So far, no one was able to do it! 

Today we observed our petri dishes, which were quite disgusting! We also took notes on our analysis and conclusion sections.  Students need to write these two sections out in paragraph form to be turned in next Monday.  After that, we designed tools to pick pumpkins from our patch.  There was some very clever design happening and a lot of designs were improved upon by someone else.  

Today we swabbed our hands to test for bacteria so that we can see how our bacteria grows over the next little bit of time.  I will post pictures of those here and on my Instagram page, so we can record results and percentages on our data table.  Please bring your lab report back next week, as we will work on our analysis and conclusion sections (and possibly do some Halloween STEM too).  

Today we worked on the paperwork portion of our next lab, which will be very fun!  We'll work on observing bacteria growth in petri dishes.  We'll do the lab portion of our lab next week.  

Some of our major noncognitive skills remain to be listening, communicating, and working as a team.  On 9/25, we completed a rubber band/cup challenge where everyone had to participate to move the rubber bands only to stack the cups.  On 10/3, students had to find 19 clues around the room and then determine how to decipher the clues and then determine what the codes on the clues said.  This required people to listen to different ideas and for everyone to participate! 

We will continue reading Fever 1793 for the next few weeks.
We'll have Fall Break next week, so no Monday class, but I'll see you on 10/16!

We've been working on Magnatiles challenges for the past few weeks.  We have had a ball run challenge each week and have tried to work in a variety of groups to complete the task.  It's been a challenge to get the ball runs completed, but that's ok!  We've been reflecting on our experiences and considering how these STEAM challenges mirror the Fantastic Failures book and life itself.  We've been working on non-cognitive skills such as communication, persistence, and resilience.  

Today we had so much fun working on a problem solving and cooperative group work activity!  If you want to see that one in action, make sure to check out my instagram page @drrowereads

We discussed what each element of STEAM is (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) and we discussed how each of those are essential to each other and how those can be combined to create more complex fields.   Since we are reading Fantastic Failures, we discussed how failure is an important part of the learning process. The we learned the value of communication and problem solving.  Of course, we discussed grit and persistance as well! 

This week's Fantastic Failures reading is chapters 1-11.  Next week will be chapters 12-24, so when I see you again, you should have pages 1-24 read (by 9/11).  As always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out and ask questions!