All the pictures of kids cutting and creating nets of 3D shapes is from our January 19th class. Because of benchmarks we were really only able to have them work on building nets. On the 26th we were back to a regular schedule and took the first major steps towards their final architecture project. We spent about 90 minutes working through our second round of octile scaling their final building choice, setting up their scaling ruler, and beginning to sketch their building. This activity tested many of their levels of independence, which is going to be a much needed skill for the remainder of this unit. They will NOT be able to wait on me repeatedly and will have to rely on the directions, videos, pictures, and examples that I have given them to be able to make steady progress. At the end of the day I introduced them to factor chart puzzles, which are basically mixed up multiplication tables. Most of them were very confused in the beginning, but once a few of their classmates figured it out, the majority of them were off and running. About 5 of them even chose to continue with these over Minecraft when we switched over to their choice of activities.
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After having last week off to observe Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, ALERT students were back at it this Monday. They solved variable equations, working their way through PEMDAS, Wednesday's 4th graders learned about nets - the 2D form of a 3D shape - and built several of them. They quickly realized that a cube + a square pyramid made a house, so as we continue to build and learn about new net shapes, they will have opportunities to combine shapes to make structures. They took some time to conduct independent review and exploration of a variety of architectural styles that we have not studied in class so far. They are very close to making a final decision on the building that they will be using for their big architecture project, more information will be coming about that soon. Tuesday's 4th graders started their unit on the World Peace Game. They were hired for their jobs and practiced how to work together to solve a sample crisis. Next week they will take inventory of all of their nation's resources, create their country name and flag, then make an attempt to start solving the actual crises from the list of 24. They also started working on nets, which in math are the flat 2D version of a 3D shape. We reviewed vertices, edges, and faces, then they cut out their shapes and folded them to create the 3D shape. We will add more shapes to their work over the next few weeks, then make a connection to architecture when they put them together to build something. |