Thank you for checking in on our progress as we continue to delve deeper into the world of STEAM. Please take a look at our weekly update:
In first grade we watched a science video on sounds and vibrations to get us ready for our Listening Walk next week! Students began learning that sounds are made from vibrations and created a web of all their prior knowledge. We will be continuously adding to our sound web as we get further into our unit.
If you have any toilet paper or paper towel rolls you'd like to donate to our class we will be using them to create musical instruments later in the year.
In second grade students completed their properties of matter lab and created science folders to hold all of their amazing work. As we complete each unit I will be sending all of their worksheets home to share with you! I hope you're as excited to see their work as they were to complete it.
In third grade students continued their research and some groups began designing their solutions to their regions weather hazard. To be honest, third grade was the highlight of my week! I was truly blown away by students thinking and teamwork. I had several groups create weather solutions with detailed blueprints that blew my mind. Students were creative, innovative, and downright spectacular! Three cheers for my third graders!
In fourth grade students began their journey into ENERGY. We started our lesson by working on group brainstorms and creating a K-W-L chart for each table group that we will continue to build on as our unit continues. Most groups didn't know much about energy and put few items in their K(know) column and excitingly enough there were many items and questions placed in the W(want to know) column. It's very exciting to have students want to learn and already be full of wonderful content related questions. I'm hoping to answer all of their "W's" before the end of our unit. Once students had completed their K-W-L charts we watched Bill Nye's Energy episode and completed a 5 question exit ticket. Students had to name two types of energy, answer wether or not energy could be converted/changed, as well as tell me a few interesting facts they learned or questions Bill Nye may have sparked. I felt like this was a great way to give students a quick overview of our unit before we begin our first energy lab next week.
In fifth grade we completed our first Cove School news broadcast from beginning to end! This was a huge accomplishment in such a short amount of time. Students delegated jobs, wrote scripts, recorded their portion of the news, and together we created one cohesive presentation. Once we had a final product students sat in groups as we watched our first try as a whole. I then had students find a "rose and a thorn" for the presentation. Our roses(positives) were that we worked as a team, we created a final product, and that we were funny yet informative. Our thorns(negatives) were that students never lifted their eyes from the script, our camera's were shaky at times, we weren't close enough to our subject and filmed too much empty space, and we gave cues out loud on camera. In finding our roses and thorns students were able to create a list of changes to be made for our second try. I feel sometimes it is easier to see and learn from our mistakes rather than being told. Students found this exercise very helpful and they cannot wait for their news broadcast to go live and be sent into the classrooms. Please be patient as we continue to learn the ins and outs of the news world and prepare for try number two : )
Thanks again for checking in!
-Mrs. Henderson
