Hello, again!

A very exciting and engaging week. We continued our design/blueprint-drawing/investigating/array-building examination of skyscrapers in math. We have some really nice drawings now, and several groups are beginning to transfer those drawings to our hallway wall. Below are some of those drawings, and some of the calculations and measurements the students made in order to create their scale drawings. It also allowed us to introduce new ideas and examine new ways of solving problems, such as division and long-division. 

In language arts, we finally have started to present our Rats of NIMH projects. Some unavoidable technological issues put this on the back burner for a while. Students showed their learning by creating slide shows on Google slides. They had to create a thesis and present evidence to back up their arguments. The groups did fantastic jobs on creating visually exciting presentations. They're also learning how to keep text to a minimum to ensure better engagement with their audience. 

In science, we continued with pulleys in our simple machines unit. After discussing some different configurations pulleys can take, such as block-and-tackle arrangements, we gave the students space to explore and build their pulley contraptions. Students really engaged with this hands-on activity, especially as we approached it like engineers and tried to come up with designs that could be useable (on a larger scale, of course). Below is a video of one such design. This student started with one fixed and one moveable pulley, but quickly realized he could alter his design to increase its efficiency. Another student was able to point out how this new design created a greater mechanical advantage, as her current understanding had it. It was so much fun to watch them talk about it. 

On Thursday, we had Teacher's Pet visit us for an in-class 'field trip'. Our presenter guided our students through building a specific type of electronic circuit, slowly adding pieces and having them build upon their previous work. After this, students played and explored through building, discovering different ways the circuits could work...or not work.

After working together to build similar circuits, each group was then given a challenge to build. Below is one team explaining their invention to solve a potential real-life problem.