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Due to the success of last November’s grade level STEM challenges, we chose the same activity for this year. Every student who did not have an office discipline referral during the month of November got to participate in one of three engineering projects. Third grade students were given straws and masking tape and asked to balance a tennis ball on a structure they created. Fourth grade students used football-shaped candy corn and toothpicks to create 3-D structures, and fifth graders used q-tips, pipe cleaners, and popsicle sticks to build bridges. Students were challenged but excited and staff reported another positive response from their classes again this year. “How much life is in one cubic foot?” This was the question I posed to my science students last week in cooperation with the biocube project, an initiative spearheaded by the Smithsonian. Basically, the project is placing a small framework in the shape of a cube somewhere in nature and observing all the life that happens within that cube. Students go out for a period of time and use tools such as magnifying glasses and microscopes to observe the plants and soil found within the cube and any insects that might be there. After learning how to use scientific tools and collect specimens, my fifth grade students traveled across town to a wooded area owned by the school district. They spent a little over an hour studying the life in and around their cube, taking notes, photos, and collecting specimens. We had a great time studying a variety of spiders and identifying several different kinds of leaves! If you are interested in pursuing the project yourself, check out the following link: https://qrius.si.edu/biocube This is a part of STEM@Schall's Real World Expansion Pack - Go Outside.
We started off part of our STEM grant this week with a Breakout EDU pretest game about using Google email. It was not only a good way to get the students used to GMail on the chromebooks but was an exercise in perseverance and patience. A timer was set for 45 minutes and students had to work independently to try and decipher the clues for each of the 4 locks. They had to get each answer correct before they were given the next clue in the sequence. The first lock required them to put in a URL address correctly, watch a video, and answer a question. Lock two had them looking at an image on the chromebook and trying to find the correct answer within the image. Only 7 made it to this stage. Lock 3 had them trying to figure out an alpha numeric code. One lone student made it to this step. Lock 4 would have been for them to send me an email with a picture attachment. None made it to this stage. At the end of the 45 minutes, I walked through all 4 of the locks and how to solve them. Sadly the prize inside, M&Ms were not won by any of them so I let them know I'd just have to eat them myself. After we were finished, we had a great classroom discussion about how we would be working throughout the year on their critical thinking skills and that when we tried a similar puzzle at the end of the year I had no doubts that they would get farther than they had today. When I asked how many of them were going to try hard next time and do even better, everyone raised their hands. I guess they didn't have any doubts either. ☺ We are off and running with a new school year and a new focus. Our STEM project this year is not only threefold but it is also geared to all grades and all classes throughout the school. In addition, each of our STEM rooms are working on our own initiatives and guest speakers. For more information on our specific projects, please feel free to look at the Real World Expansion Pack under STEM@Schall. As always we will continue to update this throughout the year. We got to have a bit of fun at Family Literacy/Fun/Game Night by having robotics stations out in the room. Parents and children were able to play in the 3 designated areas with an Ozobots table, Spheros/Ollies game track, and Cubelets Stations. 2 other teachers were involved and got to see what our STEM kids get to use. Our students also benefited in showing their parents how to use things. It was such a great success that I left the areas up for the next morning when my students had earned a behavior reward. Each month at our school, all the students who did not receive office discipline referrals get to participate in a fun reward. This month, some of the STEM Sisters were in charge of planning the event so we decided to have students complete STEM challenges! Each grade level had a different challenge, but all were focused on engineering. The teachers reported that students had a great time working together. Third grade’s challenge was to create a tower out of straws that would support a tennis ball. Fourth grade students built towers out of marshmallows and toothpicks. Fifth graders created bridges out of q-tips, pipe cleaners, and popsicle sticks. Today our experiment centered around the students using the chariots to determine how much weight their minions could haul when building a lego structure on top of the snap in brick feature of the chariot base. Gram blocks were used and they were only counted if they stayed on the chariot after a collision. The Sphero also had to be able to physically change its location, not just spin in place. Some of the interesting discussions that came up centered around the size of the bricks used (single vs. double row blocks), how lego doors and windows add height but weigh less, that by snapping the gram blocks together you could have them higher but outwit the collision rule. Some students thought that snapping the gram blocks together was cheating so this also added to the discussion about the parameters of the experiment. Some of the groups built their "containers" very tall while others found that the taller they were the more they sacrificed in being able to move the Sphero. Also, the taller the structure, the more likely it would tip over. |
AuthorThe STEM Sisters are Elementary Teachers working together on STEM related topics and projects. Archives
January 2020
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