Killian ALERT kids were busy today; working on Minecraft builds of their model buildings, working on a creative boundary breaker, a very long proverb, and solving math puzzles that went from easy, to medium, to hard. The hard one had them stumped for a while, but they worked together and persevered through to find the solution. Their boundary breaker normally has them thinking about ideas or topics differently, this week they got to think and create as they had sets of books to arrange as many different ways as they could think of. Their Minecraft builds are starting to really take shape and you can see how close many of them are able to get to an exact copy of their chosen house. They are showing a great eye for detail and creative use of materials to try and match their model as closely as possible.
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I did a horrible job remembering to take pictures the last 2 weeks, my apologies, we got so into our work that I forgot. Our first week back from break and today's half day were extremely busy and productive. We started exploring nets (2D version of a 3D shape) they cut out the shapes and folded/taped them to form the 3D verison. Next week we will hopefully finish all the nets shapes and get into our vocabulary discussions, then they will be able to use the shapes to create some buildings. They also worked very hard on their structure build challenge we started before break. They are showing some serious creativity and thoughtfulness in their designs, which are two of the reasons that ALERT decided to work with Minecraft this year. They have a few more weeks to work on this before we get into a more architecture vocabulary build. Killian ALERT students solved math puzzles and algebraic equations, the 4th graders beat the 5th graders by solving the equaitons faster. How fast kids finish is not necessarily an indicator of "better" progress or being "smarter," but since the problems we worked on today have been rather consisent in format for the last month or so, speed does start to come into play more. They learned about 4 new types of recent architecture; Art Deco, Modern, International, and Post-Modern. They had a blast exploring and discovering the different examples of post-modern architecture, can you say cat house or binocular building? They also worked on a Minecraft build that was inspired by an activity with Tuesday's class. Instead of being given a style of house to build or a format to copy, they were given a list of things that their structure needed. As long as they included these things in their build, they had freedom to design and build it however they wanted. This build is still in progress, we will pick it back up again after break. I will be sending them the process for how to put the Minecraft file in their Google Drive if they want to work on it at home over break. ALERT students at Killian solved a variety of math puzzles and algebraic equations. They were introduced to the Spanish and Mediterranean Revival styles of architecture. They drew sketches in line style, so no shading, no scribbling, only vertical, horizontal, and somewhat curved lines. The lines could vary in length and thickness, but rarely touch each other. They also explored shape strength with exploragon manipulatives, they figured out that squares, pentagons, and hexagons don't hold their shape very well, but triangles do. Triangles are really strong shapes, which is going to be really important when we get to building our model buildings. I had two math puzzles for them today, both groups went through them so quickly that I had to pull out some extra math. The 4th graders have been learning division strategies in their homerooms and were begging for some division, so I set them up with a division algebraic variables equation. The 5th graders wanted a harder solvemoji equation, so I gave them the one that only 4 kids out of all my classes have solved yet. (currently they are still working on it) We introduced 4 new styles of architecture - Craftsman, Prairie, Colonial Revival, and Tudor Revival. It was also a good vocabulary review opportunity. Their proverb, sketching assignment, and architecture work was all connected today. The proverb was about architecture as a form of art and the kids did a fantastic job of interpreting, explaining, and making connections to the quote. We introduced Cubism art through Pablo Picasso, who was emerging in the art scene when our architecture styles were becoming popular. There are some really creative examples of Cubism in the slideshow below. They also worked on a variety of sketches of 3D shapes, smooth curved lines, and modern house styles. Thursday was full of math, floor plan design, and celebrating Veteran's Day. Killian ALERT students worked hard solving a variety of math puzzles. They worked on their floor plan designs they started last week, several of them built their design in Minecraft, discovering that they probably didn't actually leave enough space on their original design. We had some creative space solutions, including kids using stair blocks as other pieces of furniture to create a varied space. One student build a space for his bed inside the wall, so that his bed did not take up floor space since everyone was limited to a 5x4 area block for their floor. We had a very interesting day today due to benchmark testing. The fifth graders got a lot of small group attention early in the day while the 4th graders worked on science testing and make-up testing, then joined us after lunch. Students worked on their house sketches, probably about half of the class has theirs finished up. They analyzed shape pictures to determine how the applied to a statement about shapes, then looked back at their previous work to figure out if this new shape created a need to change their previous way of thinking. By far the most exciting part of the day was finally getting into Minecraft Education Edition. Any build challenges or assignments for ALERT in Minecraft will go through google classroom, which should help both you and your children keep up with this new and exciting activity. |