Force and Motion

We began our science curriculum with a force and motion unit. After attending STEM TQ this summer, a two-week long teacher workshop involving STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) practices, I was really motivated to bring a lot of the things I learned into the classroom. One way of doing that was to bring a lot of design challenges where students are designing, building, engineering, and so forth.

This unit began with an iSlide experiment, learning a lot about push and pull, as well as an experiment involving ramps, different surfaces, and toy cars to determine speed and how the different surface types affect the motion of the toy car.

We have since then moved on to one of our design challenges, designing a balloon car. Each group could only "spend" $15 on supplies and had two days to create a design and execute the plan.

Balloon Car Price List and Design Plan

Many students planned and designed and quickly learned that their balloon cars failed. Only three out of six balloon cars moved a distance of more than zero inches. Unfortunately, we did have to stop our design challenge time so that we could discuss (and revisit) our norms of collaboration and teamwork. Hopefully, our redesign of this challenge will prove to be more successful than 50%.

The first car moved a total of 155 inches, and it probably would have gone even further if it had not run into the chair (another lesson learned). However, this car definitely will need a redesign because it did not use a balloon! :)

The second and third balloon cars didn't go quite as far, but any movement was a success this round! Hopefully, these two groups will redesign their balloon cars for further movement!

Look for our redesigns in a following post!

Olweus Bullying Prevention Kick-Off!

On Friday, we had the privilege of hosting Marshall the Miracle Dog at our all-school assembly! If you don't know much about Marshall, you need to look him up! He's been written about in a book (by his mom/owner) and is about to be a huge movie star!

We also had time in our classroom to talk about bullying. I decided to use what I learned from my summer reading (Bullying Hurts: Teaching Kindness Through Read Alouds and Conversations by Laminack and Wadsworth). We read Same, Same But Different (Kostecki-Shaw), Whoever You Are (Mem Fox), and Skin Again (bell hooks) and had a classroom discussion about how we have so much in common! Laminack and Wadsworth state, "As human beings, we are more alike than different. Those things that make each of us human are present in every other human across the globe." Truly, we are all the same, same, but different! I also led them in an activity where I had them think about the many ways we've been hurt by someone and each time someone bravely shared it out, I wrinkled up the new, fresh piece of notebook paper in my hands. I then continued by saying that sometimes the people who offend us or hurt us apologize or we try to make ourselves feel better, but the piece of paper is never truly new ever again.

Afterwards, we went to build confidence in ourselves with Master Lee from the ATA Marshall Arts studio in Manchester. He helped us recognize that bullies tend to pick on those who don't look confident and proud of who they are. Students left with a little winded after following some of the exercises, but with a few strategies of how to look and feel confident!

Our final rotation was in the cafeteria with Mrs. Miller and Mr. Shelton. We had an opportunity to watch some scenarios from the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program DVD and think about some of the ways that we would have responded instead (or even likewise)! After the scenarios, students were able to post the areas in our school that they found to be a "hotspot", but more importantly provide a solution for the problems that they posted.

All in all, our Robinson Roadrunners are ready to start the trend in being a friend!

Almost Ready for Robotics

We received a generous donation on Donors Choose from a Kirkwood High School graduate and Bill and Melinda Gates' Foundation! We received our package of Legos and finally had a chance to open them in our classroom!

We are now waiting for our other project proposal to get funded on Donors Choose so that we can finally try out Robotics in our 4th grade classroom! If you're interested in learning more about the proposal, check it out here!

Building a Community in Room 208

It's September?!?! That's crazy! No. Do you know what's crazy?? My schedule these days! I'm finally blogging after almost a month of teaching. But I guess it's better late than never, right? I sure hope you agree with me. :)

The first couple of weeks in 4th grade were consumed with Room 208 desperately trying to learn what it means to be a community. Our essential questions for this time were: 1) What makes a community? and 2) What does the way I show respect say about me?

Students were involved in so many activities that required a lot of communication, collaboration, teamwork, and so many other wonderful qualities needed to succeed.

Solo Cup Pyramid
- 6 solo cups, 1 rubber band, 4 24-inch long pieces of string
- Students had to work together to make a solo cup pyramid (3 on the bottom, 2 in the middle, and 1 on top) without using their hands.

Build a Tower

- playdough, 5 straws

- Students have to build a tower using only the materials provided.

Saving Sam

- gummy worm and gummy life saver, 1 plastic cup, 4 paper clips

- Sam is the worm that has tipped over in his or her boat (plastic cup)! He or she needs to be saved and placed into the life preserver! The only thing is that the partners can only use the paper clips and must not use touch the worm or the life preserver directly!

 

Magic Carpet Ride
- butcher paper
- Students are on top of the butcher paper and must flip the paper over while the entire group is still standing on top of it.

Marshmallow Challenge (Read more about the Marshmallow Challenge here!)

- 20 spaghetti noodles, 1 yard of masking tape, 1 yard of string, 1 marshmallow

- Students have 18 minutes to plan and design the tallest freestanding structure with the marshmallow on top

The Human Tank

- blindfolds, socks

- Students are paired up and one student is blindfolded

- The student who is not blindfolded is giving his or her partner directions to find a sock and throw it at another blindfolded student

After these activities, as well as some others not mentioned in this post, students created a list of thoughts to the question, "What makes a community?" We then created this anchor chart to help remind us off what we want our learning community to be like and is hanging in our classroom (our class picture is missing from the middle):