5th grade at Dixie had the students become birds and did an activity to help them see how different beaks pick up different food. The students collected the data and started to create bar graphs to compare the different beaks with the types of food they are made to eat. 3rd grade from Glenwood did the same beak lesson.
Coleman tests their first iterations of their nests. Bird nest videos from Michelle Giraud, 3rd grade, Sun Valley: "Below you will find 2 videos that support the bird nest lesson. I have shown these and additional ones to my class and they love them. At first, I struggled with when to show it. I decided to show it a few days before they had the chance to actually create their own. Seeing the videos made the idea of creating a nest more realistic and I think they had a better vision than if not seeing it." I attended a NGSS workshop that used the bird beak as a lesson that could encompass many of the concepts in the new standards. I have linked the lesson they used (Lawrence Hall of Science) and took some pictures. They used a variety of "beaks" and a wide variety of "food." They also had an interesting way to graph it at the end. Check out the pictures!
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4th graders in iTEAMS classrooms will be working on a gravity car design challenge this Spring using the Sonoma Raceway Race Car Challenge curriculum. Included below are links to videos used by various 4th grade teachers. Lesson 1: 4th graders at San Pedro School... parachutes! To introduce the concepts and vocabulary of gravity and air resistance or drag. Other resources
Lesson 2: The students looked at how toy cars, balls, and marbles roll on different surfaces and inclines. What made a difference? How much the incline? How much the car weighed? What types of surfaces worked better? The students used surfaces around the playground (slides, blacktop, inclined cement surfaces, grass, inclined grass, flat cement, etc) to test out their theories. Discussion about friction and aerodynamics followed. Lesson 3: Aerodynamics and drag. Students did a close reading with the passages from Sonoma Raceway. The took a field trip to the parking lot to discover cars that were more and less aerodynamic. They drew pictures of the most aerodynamic cars and included airflow with arrows. Lesson 4: Since the class is still collecting materials for their cars, a lesson was needed to "fill in." This lesson was a perfect fit. It gave the students an opprotunity to design and re-deisgn on a smaller scale and learn more about cars and another aspect that effects their movement: wheels. (This came from the Engineering is Elementary (EiE) free resource "Go Green! Recycled Racers"). Lesson 5: Building a racer. The students created a racer from a set of directions. This gave them the a certain understanding of some of the things they need to consider when they build their own car. It helps to give some common ground for all students to start with. Build their OWN racers! Students use all they have learned in the previous lesson to build, test, redesign, build, test, redesign until race day. Picture below are from Manor School and San Pedro.
Design Day Mary E. Silveira with Gina Tanner and Ed Malaret More pictures form Manor School in Ross Valley with Mary Accord as they build and test! Building Day at Wade Thomas in Ross Valley with Jenny Cavanna's class! Race Day at Ross Valley Schools! 4th grade students from three elementary schools, Wade Thomas, Brookside, and Manor, come together for a final race! Wade Thomas come out as champions! Molly O'Donoghue used another unit to start of her racers, "I started off my racers unit with a simple design challenge to build a mover that could carry a match box 5 feet. Groups had to work together."
This is a great list of resources from EIE (Engineering is Elementary). Thanks Lindsay Hess, Wade Thomas, for sending this to share!
From Hannah Dye, 4th grade teacher at Dixie: The students worked together in teams to design buildings that would survive an earthquake of 7 or more on the Richter scale. We created a list of building codes as a class and discussed the recent earthquake in Haiti. Students discovered that much of the damage in Haiti could have been diminished if they had building codes in place.
White Hill 7th graders learn about how structure and function are related while building a "circulatory system." Thanks Kaki!
Miller Creek's 7th grade science teachers proposed a challenge to their students: Build a helmet that will protect someone's head from injury. They built small prototypes that would cover an egg and then tested them. Some of the rules: They had to be able to be take off the helmet (Does anyone wear a helmet to bed?), it could encompass the egg (No one has a floating head!), and withstand a face first fall from a specified distance. Here are some pictures of what happened. Thanks Sue Holland, Janice Woods and Erik Lunde! 2nd year of the helmet project. Survivors! Melody Murphy, 5th grade at Glenwood, used these resources on her Google Classroom for her students to explore water. They were told to be prepared to talk about something they learned or noticed.
They then read from 'Canals and Dams' talking about the impact of humans on water (needing it for crops, etc) and what they used to tame water or get it where they need it. All this leading up to the dam project. Mary Kate Kenney's 3rd graders at Coleman works with her students to see what they know about floating objects in preparation for a clay boat design challenge. Day two of Mary Kate's 3rd graders. They were able to build clay boats, test, record observations, and iterate. They all had successful clay boats in round two. Here are some other resources that might be helpful for your clay boats/ buoyancy lessons. Thanks Mary Kate!
Mr. Johnson's and Mr. Lecy's classes built two different models of "breath" powered rockets for the students to test and re-design to find ones that went the farthest.
Students were given straws and paper clips to build the strongest bridge that weighs the least (least amount of supplies). They can test their designs, re-design, and test again. Each day they fill out an exit slip about what problems they have encountered and possible solutions so the next day they are reminded what they did the previous day.
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February 2017
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iTEAMS is a professional development research project designed to provide teachers with support to deepen their content knowledge and pedagogy to promote STEM education aligned to the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSS) and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
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