Wednesday's 4th graders worked really hard this week. We had several kids who finished their blueprints last week get to attach the support structures to their houses, and a few of them were able to start putting up the walls and glueing them together. Six more students finished their digital blueprints, which made for a long night for their teacher running their designs through the cutter, but as of next week almost 3/4 of the class will have their walls set up. That means a bunch of them will get into roofing next week, which should be a challenge. They will hopefully be able to look back on our learning about nets and 3D shapes to help them figure it out. We also continued our work solving number riddles, the initial answer was solved by the first student in about 30 seconds, the rest of the class followed up his work by finding several patterns that would also lead them to correct answers. All in all we ended up with over 30 correct answers to the riddle. We ended the day by working on block coding in Minecraft, it didn't take long after I showed them a few examples for them to start getting super creative in the codes they wrote.
0 Comments
Tuesday was a busy day in the ALERT room at NSE. Students made their final decisions on which house they would make for their final architecture project, we handed out awards for the World Peace Game, solved math puzzles and big multiplication problems, then we practiced creating block code in Minecraft. 5th grade finally had a full day of ALERT class after the last month of state testing, make up tests, and STEMS day. They started the day with some new math riddles, which went extremely well. It took them a bit to find the pattern in the numbers, but once they did, they found some truely monsterous numbers that fit. We went into the quadrillions and septillions, then some numbers that I had to research the names for. They also made a final decision on the house they are building for their final ALERT model project. They will be sketching, measuring, blueprinting, and constructing a miniature model of this house beginning next week. With only a few ALERT classes left they will have to work really hard and stay on task to get these finished by the end of the year. Wednesday's class was finally back to a full day of ALERT after having short classes for almost a month due to state testing. We solved math puzzles and a new type of math riddle and continued working on our architecture projects. There were more house sightings this week as two more students received their cut walls. Two more of them finished their digital blueprints this week, so they will get cut walls next week. Congratulations World Peace Games Champions! Tuesday's 4th graders won the WPG today by finishing with no active wars going on and all nations operating above budget. They didn't have any crises to solve, they finished those last week, but with 3 requirements to win the game, today's focus was about raising money. Two nations were very smart financially and were operating at huge surpluses, which was very helpful, since those nations used the extra money to purchase supplies and materials from the nations who needed to get back above budget. This class played a great game the whole time, really focusing on what the most important issues were, laying aside annoyances or arguements between players (for the most part), and in general thinking creatively about finding solutions to a wide variety of complex problems. With the time remaining in class we had a victory celebration, some kids worked on Minecraft builds, while others challenged each other in chess or checkers. Congratulations class, game well played! We had another half day class due to testing this week. However, we still accomplished a lot. Students learned about 5 new architectural styles; Art Deco, Spanish Revival, Mediterranean, Modern, and Post Modern styles. They analyzed pictures and house examples to determine similarities and differences between previous styles as well as for specific architectural vocabulary words we have learned. They spent the last bit of time searching through the internet trying to find examples of houses they found interesting, they attempted to draw them in their sketchbook. This is a precursor to them choosing a final house for their end of ALERT architecture project, which we will start on March 21st. (There is no ALERT class next Monday due to NSE's STEM day - all students at NSE will be engaged in a variety of STEM related activities throughout the day.) Between testing and the events for Read Across America week, we had an extremely short class this week. So short that I forgot to take pictures. The kids started a Minecraft project where they are using screenshots and videos to catalog and describe the work they are doing in Minecraft. If you keep track of their google classroom work, then you'll be able to see what they started this week. This will be an ongoing piece of work as they continue to build their skills (and structures).
We had another shortened class this week due to testing. The kids played Gameday #8 of the World Peace Game and managed to finish solving all of the crises. They did get a little help from the weather god when one nation was hit by a hurricane that actually wiped out an group of mercenaries that had shown up to take over an island. They also researched how big objects have to be for them to totally burn up as the enter earth's atmosphere, this research came in handy when they discovered that the broken satellite that was about to fall was small enough that it would not survive to be able to land on anyone's country. |