Presenting: Engineering!

Our engineering research in 5th grade has given us an idea about how expansive the field of engineering really is.  Turns out there are over 200 various fields and that number seems to be growing.  Students researched a sepearte field they seemed interested in such as environmental engineering or electrical engineering, found out annual average salary, listed universities offereing that degree plan, types of classes to take in high school and above if interested in that job, and what duties these engineers perform in their jobs.  Our students tried some new methods of teaching us about their topic with presentation platforms like Kahoot and Powtoons:

Abby B.

  Faith

  Gabriel Ben

What is so deep and complex about Halloween?

Wanted to update everyone on the happenings in GT pullout in the last few weeks.  Grades 1-3 created a word cloud of their own powerful traits to make a t-shirt their self-portrait could wear. These have become positive sentinels in our room, always encouraging us to become the powerful people we know we can be.  Our studies took us to our first inspirational person:  Nancy Brinker, the founder of the Susan G. Komen foundation.  We learned about Nancy's important story of her sister's experience with breast cancer and how Nancy created the foundation in honor of her sister to help others with the disease.  We also looked at 10 charitable foundations created by children, some as young as 4 years old!  Finally, some of us created our own awareness ribbon to show others our own causes.

We used Halloween in GT pullout as a learning experience by completing different "spooky" rotations.  One of our favorites was the engineering challenge station where we had to create the tallest or most detailed haunted mansion in the time frame; another was the teacher table with Mrs. Imrie where we used our icons of depth and complexity to dig into the Halloween event even more.  We discussed the big ideas of, trends in Halloween costumes, origination of the name and day itself, multiple perspectives of Halloween, such as what our parents thought of Halloween as well as how Halloween has changed over time and many others.  Many of us said our parents had to work hard to make sure we had our costumes, decorations and candy (multiple perspectives)--I had to agree!!

Grades 4 and 5 have continued working on their engineering research.  More coming soon.

What Is Engineering?

In preparation for our robotics unit, 5th grade is researching some different engineering fields.  We were all surprised to learn that there are about 200 different types of engineering and that number is growing.  The first activity we completed was the engineering sort.  We looked at examples and non-examples of engineering and placed them on a chart accordingly.  After that, we picked a type of engineering and began researching about it.  Many of us had written questions we still had earlier in the lesson and began looking for answers about college courses required in the field, beginning salary, job duties, and more.  We will share our research with everyone on our choice of learning platform:  iMovie, power point, kahoot or powtoons just to name a few.

4th Grade Engineering

Help Desk

Fourth grade began a new unit this week in engineering.  To begin, watched a NASA video on the engineering design process, then looked at engineered items.  When we watched the video called, Help Desk, we realized immediately that engineers solve problems to make life better for people. We learned that they ask questions about the problem and what others have tried, they imagine possibilities/solutions, plan out how they will solve the problem, create their design, then test and re-test for improvement and effectiveness.  Using these same design principles and common materials, we are going to create our own engineered items that we feel people would like to use.

Some of us wanted to do some extra projects at home, so we looked at a website that could help give us ideas called diy.org.  The cool factor on this website is that it offers badges (either digital or real) if we do the required challenges listed.  For example, if we want to be a Cardboarder and earn that badge, we have to complete 3 of the challenges listed.  We thought we would give it a try and see how many we could collect-with our parents' permission of course!  Click below for website:

Powerful People Unit

We have started a new unit in GT called Powerful People.  The Big Idea of this Unit:

Studying a diverse group of leaders who've changed the world for the better and allows students to conclude that their traits and characteristics cross all lines of color, class, and culture, thereby motivating their own personal aspirations.  We talked about people we thought were powerful people and why.  At the end we concluded that powerful people share several traits and we learned some new words in the process.  As we study these individuals and try our hand at some of the activities they were involved in, we will begin to categorize our powerful people into groups: creators, ecologist, advocate, medical/pioneer, athletes, kids/teen, etc.

1st Grade and Powerful People

First grade is starting a new unit called Powerful People which is the study of successful people and the character traits that make them successful.  In addition to learning about their character we also study some of the areas of that person's expertise.  For example, we will learn why Milton Hershey was a powerful person, and we will also think like a scholar about:  CHOCOLATE, yes! (Coming soon)  In our introduction to this unit, we look at ourselves as powerful people.  To help us understand this, we watched a short clip about JJ Watt helping a young boy who was being bullied at school.  Most of us thought JJ Watt was powerful because of his muscles, but we learned his real power is helping people!  We created small lego sculptures to remind us about each trait and a self portrait that includes a frame of our own special traits.  We will add extra individuality to this project with help from an iPad app called word cloud, and will post pictures of that digital project later.

First Weeks of GT

For the last couple of weeks in GT pullout we have been warming up our brain with some challenging logic/math problems, finishing an engineering challenge, and starting our grade level units.  Below are some pictures of us working on the "Flag Pole Fiasco", an engineering challenge with which all grade levels started the year.  Groups were allocated the same amount of everyday household items, eg. 10 craft sticks, 10 rubber bands and so on, in order to build a better flag and flagpole that could stand by itself!  Groups earned additional points for each inch of height on the flagpole; the most points earned was in the "cooperating with our group" category.  My favorite ideas were using paper clips as connector pieces on the straws, support systems using a counter-weight, and using flexible parts of straws as support beams!  Some of our students at work below:

Welcome back, Flyers!

Image from TechnologyRocksSeriously

What a great couple of weeks in GT pullout!  Our first day started with a test in all grade levels.  I heard several students ask, "Is it a math test?  Reading?"  I know I heard several groans; students just couldn't believe I was testing them.  Our test was actually a quiz about...Mrs. Imrie, and students selected their answers on the iPad using an app called Kahoot.  Afterward we rated the app in different categories: is it useful for learning?  Is it engaging?  Flyers gave this app high ratings!  We reviewed the icons of depth and complexity through an All About Me pennant activity, and got an information sheet ready for our parents' "homework" that night.

To warm up for this week each of our classes worked on a differentiated logic problem.  We discussed strategies that would help us figure out the problem like using a grid, picture, notes or 3D objects, then set to work.  Next we brainstormed ideas to fix the engineering challenge "The Flag Pole Fiasco"!  Groups were allocated the same amount of everyday household items, eg. 10 craft sticks, 10 rubber bands and so on, in order to build a better flag and flagpole.  Groups earned additional points for each inch of height on the flagpole; the most points earned is in the "cooperating with our group" category.  We will share our final products next week.

More logic problems?  Click here


And finally, just want to give out a BIG thank you to the huge response for our request for supplies in our GT classroom!!

Kinder: Originality!

Kinder has been learning about thinking:  Fluency, Flexibility, Logic, Compare/Contrast and now Originality.  We read the book The Bag I'm Taking to Grandma's and discussed how the book related to us.  A few of us had spent the night at Grandma's and told about the things they had to take with them.  In the book, our main character has so many things he wants to take that the bag starts to break!  We talked about "essentials" and how our character was missing those, then we created our own special bags to take to grandma's using an app called Pic Collage.  We laughed when our original thinking had us taking a Pizza Hut store or a MLB player to grandma's!  See our bags below:

Grade 3: Math, Symmetry and the Taj Mahal

This was our last week to spend on the country of India.  Today we discussed how Rangoli designs and the Taj Mahal showed symmetry.  We read a book called Seeing Symmetry by Loreen Leedy and learned about line and rotational symmetry.  Folding die cut letters of the alphabet such as Z, C, and A, we determined if they had one or two lines of symmetry.  Words like MOM and HID also have lines of symmetry but one is vertical and the other horizontal.  It was very interesting to look at objects and decide if they were symmetrical in some way.  We reviewed the design of the Taj Mahal then practiced making our own building designs with symmetry on a magnet board and various shapes.  Some of us took on the challenge of creating a building with 2 lines of symmetry!  Great job, third grade!

Summer is coming and we have to keep our brain thinking!  Below are two links that might be interesting to our third graders during our time out of school.  DIY.com offers many projects and interesting activities in various subject areas. Click on the Skills button at the top and choose challenges to complete for badges of progress!   More to come later!




Do it yourself challenges:

8 Youtube science channels for kids

 Where's Jake?

Carter