STEAM night is next week and 5th graders are busy working on Multi-media presentations. They had to choose a scientist to research and then produce a Google Slide Presentation (1 slide). On the slide they are required to have 3 photographs of the scientist or their work, three interesting facts about the scientist, a list of their accomplishments with dates, and active link to a website about the scientist (no higher than a 3rd grade level), and a 30 sec-2 minute embedded student created video. The videos we've seen so far are slideshows, green screened videos, interviews, and stop motion. A couple students have connected a paper copy of their presentation to a computer program they have written in scratch. When someone walks up to the presentation they can touch certain spots and see an animation on a computer screen or hear information about the scientist. Can't wait to see the final products - more photos and information coming! Just wanted to let you know that the STEAMworks lab is being used during class, recess, and advisory to create some of the videos and students love having the space, the green screen and the ipads available to them! Thanks again to the grant and the support of PTA!
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First graders went to the STEAMworks lab to see what soil, sand, rocks, fossils and shells look like under the microscopes. These digital microscopes were purchased with our grant money and the kids LOVE them. They can also take them off the stand and of course they had to look at things like their fingerprints, clothing, hair, and keyboards. They can't wait to come back when they are studying plants to see what those look like up close and personal! We'll use these pictures next week when we write about our observations in a digital drawing package, Pixie.
We have 20 Lego WeDo kits in the STEAMWORKS lab. We let the 2-5th graders use them. Younger students could use them but if you lose certain pieces it makes the kit unusable. Building and programming a model takes about an hour. Since I usually only see 2nd grade for 40 mins. we split it into 2 sessions - a building session and a programming session. I like to put the "expert builders together and the less experienced people together. This makes sure that everyone is touching and building and not sitting and watching. I LOVE it when I can go up to first timers and tell them they are further along than the experts. This first year I give the students the choice of building a kicking leg, a goal keeper, or cheerleaders. The leg being the easiest, the cheerleaders the toughest. Everyone leaves the room ultimately being successful. Below are videos of the kids putting two completed kits together. The first one is the kicking leg trying to kick past the goal keeper. Not only do they program the goal keeper to move side to side but sensing when the ball goes through the goal and putting the score on a scoreboard. Also below you see a ball going through the goal and when it passes the cheerleaders (actually I think someone arm goes in front of the sensor), the cheerleaders cheer. Fun times!
For the 3rd year in a row Gullett hosted an HOUR OF CODE. All over the world students during the 2nd week of December participate. The idea is to get any and everyone to try programming for 1 hour to encourage people into the industry. Did you know there are currently 517,393 open computing jobs nationwide and last year, only 42,969 computer science students graduated into the workforce? I like exposing it to students at this age when EVERYONE believes they can do anything. They will go into middle school not being afraid of joining the robotics team or getting into a coding class. Gullett kids ATE IT UP! PreK did CodeAPillar & Kodable on Ipads; Kinder did CodeAPillar on Ipads and BeeBots week 2;(no pictures due to a lot of instruction); 1st did code.org programming and Puzzlets; 2nd did Star Wars hour of code then Puzzlets; 3rd did Puzzlets; 4th did scratch programming, code.org & Beebots; 5th did Google CS first/scratch programming and Makey Makeys (in the room the month before) Here are some photos (click to enlarge): PreK CodaAPillar |
AuthorMy name is Anne Jarriel and I oversee the SteamWorks lab at Gullett Elementary. I'm blogging about what I see and lead in the STEAM lab which is mostly kids just having a great time! Archives
January 2018
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