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The third grade students explored closing a circuit using our MakeyMakeys and Chromebooks. First we closed the circuit by holding hands, next they worked in groups using their bodies and play-dough to close the circuits and make the program work. Have you ever noticed that the older a child is, the more sophisticated the “play”. Last Thursday we had a brief school wide power outage-right at the end of the 5th grade's STEM class...right as I asked them to save their complete or nearly completed Excel projects. Today we tried to open them. Most didn’t have all their hard work updated and some were completely corrupted frustrating everyone. So what did we do when we were thrown a curve-ball-we had an unplanned session in the MakerSpace. I love watching how the 5th graders used many of the materials that the littlest kids use. I love their discussions, collaborations, and complex projects. I especially loved the smiles on their faces. The Second Grade students enjoyed getting familiar with the Maker Tables in our MakerSpace today. They worked on a STEAM (Science Technology Engineering ART Math) project and enjoyed themselves very much!
The middle school students were delighted with the opportunity to explore our new high level marble run material in the MakerSpace. Goal #1 has been to create a working marble run. There has been a lot of discussion on momentum and deceleration and angles of the downward slope to keep the marble from jumping. The end goal is to connect the three groups individual runs into one project.
The fourth and the fifth grades are learning how to create spreadsheets using Microsoft Office. Both classes are doing a similar activity where they use a budget and select items and then use autosum to add. The fifth graders are learning how to create a formula. They are learning how to find the difference - or subtract. In this instance, they are finding the difference between their budget and the total spent. All students are working on creating a graph and customizing it. They are doing a great job! The kindergarten class enjoyed a new coding game this week. They got our pirates to the treasure and avoided the bombs. Then they repeated the activity in a smaller version with a partner. It was great fun. The first and second graders used the same manipulatives but their challenges were much harder. Everyone is enjoying our hands-on coding.
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AuthorI'm Mrs. G - and we're doing great things in the ECA STEM program this year! Categories
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February 2018
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