We-Do Burglar Alarms
3/18/14 The alarms are complete! We've shared almost all of them out to the group and recorded quite a few with the ipad. At the right, is one of the alarms created by our morning class. The afternoon class started brainstorming on our Coral Reef project, asking great guiding questions and forming teams. Our goal with this project is to work as a class and create a model of a coral reef that is 3-4 feet by 2 feet. We have lots of ideas, many questions to answer and lots of enthusiasm!
3/11/14 Almost there! Mrs. Ronning's class finished presenting their alarm designs to the class today and Mrs. Flo's class is ready to begin presenting next week! There have been some very innovative designs and safety devices (those burglars better look out.) Photos to come this weekend. We've started talking about our next build...the Coral Reef. You can find a link to the curriculum guide here: guide.
3/4/14 We had 6 students this morning in Mrs. Flo's class (OJP fieldtrips at other schools kept students at their regular school). Unfortunately, we didn't have any teams to present, so we gave a try at Genius Hour...check it out on our front page. In the afternoon class, we had several groups present and we are half way there! Love the posters and designs...this kids are very creative!
1/28/14 We are 3 weeks into our new build. Teams are working together to create a house alarm that will be triggered by the motion or tilt sensors (along with a few other creative traps!). After building a model house with the alarm built in, teams are creating a sales poster to advertise their product. Some are getting close. Stay tuned for photos and updates!
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WeDo Airplanes & Software IntroductionsBy Jonathon, Graham and Joshua
12/3/13 We are about halfway through recording our videos...most groups are close. Mrs. Ronning's class has started working on the Burglar Challenge and are drawing up plans and starting their build for this open-ended challenge. My morning class will be kicking this off after our State Fair.
11/19/13 More videos were completed this week and they will be uploaded soon! Some of the videos are longer than others and the size has to be compressed (another opportunity to learn!). We are going to be moving on to our Burglar Alarm challenge very soon! 11/5/13 Our first video was completed today and several teams are in the final phases of rehearsal and prop production. Hope you can see the video above! 10/29/13 No pictures today...we were making movies! Some of the teams have completed their airplane robot, written their computer program, collaborated on a rescue story and are rehearsing their stories on the ipads. Official recording begins next week!! 10/15/13 Today, we continued working on our airplane models, two programs (one for the airplane and another for our animation), and are writing our "rescue stories." Our goal is to begin recording next time we meet - in two weeks. Rehearsals began for a few teams today. It may take two days to record the 16 teams!
10/8/13 Our room was buzzing today - We have airplanes! And they are getting ready to perform rescue missions! Today, both classes worked on their airplanes and programming. We shared the story of a humpback whale that was entrapped in fishing lines. Rescuers came to her aid and freed her. (The story can be found here) Now, our task is to write a rescue story of our own, using our airplanes. We'll be running two programs at once in the software - one for background and sounds, another to operate our airplanes with the tilt sensor. We will work on creating, fine tuning and editing over the next 3 sessions. After that, we will record videos using the ipads. I might crash the website, but I hope to post them here! :-)
10/1/13 Both classes have started looking at the software. We are decoding the software and discovering strategies that engineers used when creating it (ie. all motor buttons are green, etc.) We have learned how to save our file names and navigate around for directions and assignments. Going forward, 3rd grade will be building airplanes and creating rescue stories (using the background and sound features) to be recorded with an ipad. I hope to post a few on our website in upcoming weeks!
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Marshmallow Challenge9/24/13 Third Graders took on the Marshmallow Challenge this week. Given 20 spaghetti noodles, 1 yard of string, 1 yard of tape and 1 large marshmallow, they were asked to build the tallest structure that they could on the table. Working in teams of 2-3 students, they had 18 minutes to work together. After the activity, we debriefed, sharing out some of the challenges and successes of our time. We measured our structures and averaged the height of all the teams in the class. We imagined ourselves in Seattle and other places around the world, looking for patterns in architecture. We will likely try this again in a few months...curious to see what changes we make the second time!!
Ultimate Soccer!Update: Mrs. Ronning's class completed their marathon play off in an additional HOUR of time! Whooo-hooo! They had some strong kickers!
9/18/13 Mrs. Ronning's class is back! We took the time to look at our kickers from last year and spent some time making sure that our programs and models are ready to go...on the 25th, we will be finishing our double elimination playoff tournament. Third Grade Special Guest11/15/13 Today, third grade welcomed a pilot to our classroom to share with us some of his knowledge about airplanes. Mr. Fuller had a great demonstration of two forces that work with airplanes: lift and thrust. We made paper airplanes, looked at some of his equipment (that helmet is really heavy and night goggles are cool!), examined aviation maps, watched a video that demonstrated some of the capabilities of his plane and crew and then had a great time flying paper airplanes outside. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR COMING TO SEE US!
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