What was originally supposed to be a half day of class due to field day turned into a full day of math and architecture projects.
We were so busy that I forgot to take any pictures. There continue to be model houses all over the room as glue dries on wooden braces and wall connections. The students working on their roof continue to attach pieces, none of them are ready to actually make their roof yet, and they are figuring out that the math and geometry side of roofing is harder than for the rest of the building. Rectangular houses give you right angles, so the walls are easier to attach. But in roofing, there aren't as many right angles, and as some parts change size, it automatically makes the other sides need to be readjusted.
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It was yet another shortened day for Tuesday's class due to the weather in the afternoon. They spent the whole time working on their architecture projects. Three of them now have houses that are cut - two are working on their roof. Everyone else is in the blueprinting or digital blueprinting phase and will hopefully finish that shortly after we return from spring break. After me being out sick last week the kids picked right back up with their architecture projects and continued to make speedy progress. Two classes had a field trip in the morning, but even with a very much shortened day most of them still managed to finish their scale measuring and start on their blueprints. For the kids that were here the whole day, nearly all of them finished scale measuring and started blueprints (there were several who got started on their digital blueprints) which is really nice progress in such a short amount of work time. They made significant progress on their architecture projects. There are construction projects all over the room as they find places to store their structures as the glue dries so they can start their next phase. Many are on to their roofs, so they are setting up a graph paper template over their existing structure to make sure everything fits. Earlier this year they learned the flat roofs tend to leak a lot, now some of them are finding the answer to the question, "If the flat roof leaks, why would anyone make a flat roof?" A flat roof is much easier to model and figure out than a gable or gambrel roof. Even though today was a very short day due to benchmark testing the kids came in and got a great deal accomplished on their architecture projects. We went from choosing a final house and starting the scale measuring process last week, to several students finishing blueprints and getting their houses ready to cut this week. 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. 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. |