First Grade Force and Motion in the Makerspace

Students in first grade at both Glenvar and Oak Grove used the Makerspace to build hands-on knowledge of force and motion.  They rotated through six centers to investigate and understand Science SOL 1.2:  The student will investigate and understand that moving objects exhibit different kinds of motion. Key concepts include a) objects may have straight, circular, and back-and-forth motions; b) objects may vibrate and produce sound; and c) pushes or pulls can change the movement of an object that moving objects exhibit different kinds of motion.

Maker Center Planning Sheet and Student Reflection

Center 1: Spinning Tops — Circular motion and elapsed time

Prompt: Make a spinning top.  How long does it spin?

Center 2: Air Tube

Make something that will fly.

Center 3: Zipline – pushes and pulls/ straight and circular motion

Design a car that can carry a toy dragon across the room on a zipline.  Explore ways to make the car move smoother and faster.

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Center 4: Musical Instrument – Vibration

Create a musical instrument with rubber bands.  Find ways to include higher and lower pitched notes on your instrument.

Center 5:  Racetracks

Build a racetrack.  Experiment with different types of cars, marbles, and balls.  Which ones go faster?  Slower?  Why?

Center 6: Robots On the Move

Make Dash the Robot Move!

 Cross Posted at the Learning Collaboratory.

Conversations with Characters

Mrs. Barger’s class has been reading Howliday Inn and Blood on the Water.  They designed a 3D model of a character from one of the books, then used the app Chatterpix to animate their characters.  Take a listen below!

 

Chester from elemitrt on Vimeo.

Harold from elemitrt on Vimeo.

Jill from elemitrt on Vimeo.

Harold from elemitrt on Vimeo.

Harrison from elemitrt on Vimeo.

Chester from elemitrt on Vimeo.

Anti-Bullying with Sock Puppets

Mrs. Pollock’s Guidance classes in third and fourth grade at Glenvar have been role playing bullying situations by using the app Sock Puppets.  In Third Grade, they practiced different strategies to get out of a bullying situation.  In Fourth Grade, they practiced the importance of bystanders.  Here are a few of their videos below:

Following the Iditarod

Dallas Seavey

Students in Mrs. Schirmer’s Fourth Grade reading class have been learning about the Iditarod.  While the event started on Saturday, they’ve spent the past few weeks reading books and researching information about it.  As part of their research, they created Musher Trading Cards using the Trading Cards iPad app by Read, Write, Think (you could use the website too). They gave each of their classmates a copy of the trading cards they made, and will watch these musher’s closely as the race progresses.  Check out their cards below!

Students will be following the Iditarod at the official site: http://iditarod.com/ and plotting progress on the classroom map.  Finally, they will skype with resident of Alaska to get first hand information about what it’s like to live there.  More on that in another post!

 

Pic Collage and Videos with Famous American Speeches

Students in Ms. Barger’s fourth grade class just finished a huge unit on Famous Americans.  As part of a STEM activity, students were responsible for writing a speech about a Famous American.  They also had to create a poster to use in their speech with a pop-up and movable part.

As students were given speeches, I filmed them (on their assigned iPad).  Students took notes when other students gave speeches.  Then students watched their own speech and used a self-evaluation sheet to foster self-reflection.  They used their notes and each other’s posters to create a Pic Collage containing three facts they learned from listening to other classmates’ speeches.

Students enjoyed the project, and it really gave ownership to giving speeches and listening to others.  Both these skills are important Fourth Grade English SOLs.

High Tech Snowmen at night

Students in Mrs. Osburn’s writing classes introduced their new class blogs with high tech snowmen! They created snowmen based on the book, Snowmen At Night, and wrote short blog posts about them. Then, they created QR Codes to attach to their snowmen. When parents came for the 5th Grade Music program, they were able to scan the QR codes, read the corresponding blog posts, and leave comments for the students.

 

Check out their blogs here:

Rotation 1

Rotation 2

Rotation 3

Would you please leave a few comments for these new bloggers?

 

Diversity Pic Collages

Mrs. Chamberland’s Social Studies class is studying Diversity.  This past week, they used the iPad app, Pic Collage, to create digital posters showing what diversity in the United States look like.  Here was their challenge:

Create a Pic Collage that helps show what diversity in Virginia looks like.  Include pictures and words.  You must have 3 examples of ways you see diversity in your life. You must use pictures and words in your collage.

Their projects are below!

O.R.E.O. Project 2013

Mrs. Chamberland’s class participated in the great O.R.E.O. Project this year!  These second graders used their estimation, counting, and graphing skills during this project.  They submitted their results online, and compared the number of oreos they stacked with people all over the world!

Take a look at an example graph they made in Excel!
Oreo Chamberland 2013