Design Engineers

Today I set the class a technology challenge:

WALT: design and build a prototype bridge.

Problem:  A flood has washed away the bridge across the river between two towns.  Your job is to design a new bridge that will let cars drive from one side of the river to the other.

You can only use the materials provided to make your bridge.  

Success Criteria:  Your bridge must be able to hold the weight of a toy car, and stretch from one side of the river to the other so the car can be pushed across.

The students were quite excited about this challenge, and then I told them the only materials they could use were paper and sellotape!  None the less they attacked the challenge with gusto.  Firstly they individually drew bridge designs after seeing some photos on the internet.  Then they got into groups and decided which designs, or which features of each others designs, were the best.  Then they set to work on making their bridge.  By collaborating together and sharing ideas the students were learning to compromise and think of the end result.

Here are some of the original designs:

All the students were working hard to find ways to make their bridges fit the gap and support cars.

After lunch students were given 15 minutes to finish their building projects and then it was testing time.  There were some impressive structures and almost all withstood the weight of the car, and were stable enough to stay standing as the cars travelled across the span.  Four groups went to show Mrs Sandifer their models and were given Principal Awards stickers for their efforts.  Tino Pai Room 19 a great display of collaboration, design and building!

Progress with our Tinkering Box

We are still busy tinkering with our computer in the 'Tinkering Thinking' box.  We have discovered lots of wires, screws and copper.  Today Max discovered an interesting looking part so we decided to look it up on the internet to see if we could find out what it was called and what it did.  By entering the part number we were able to find out that it was an 'Assembly Heatsink".  It didn't look very fancy or important but just the one part cost $199.48.  This information gave the students a bit of an understanding as to why computers are so expensive!

Max, Janielle, Danella, Ethan and Tiara doing some tinkering.

Inside our computer.

Danella works on the disc drive.

Disco Fun

The hall was a blur of flashing lights and glowing balls, rings, sticks and other items last Friday - yes it was disco time!

The dancing was so fast and funky that I couldn't catch many of the moves of my camera, but here are a few photos of Room 19 members having fun.  I'm looking forward to seeing more dancing feet in action during school production next term.

Disco Inferno

It's Disco Time!

I'm looking forward to seeing those who can make it to the disco tonight getting their dancing shoes on and having lots of fun.  If you haven't got a ticket you can pay on the door tonight.  See you at 6.30pm!

Money, money, money!

Part of the NZ Curriculum is Financial Literacy or Financial Capability.  In a nutshell this is getting the students to understand money and be able to make decisions about how best to manage money. You can read more about this here :NZ Curriculum - Financial Capability in Schools

The students are doing some work in class in both Maths time and in CRT time with Mrs Tolsma. Today we brainstormed where money comes from, what money we use and what happens when we pay using cash for items that cost for example $2.99 when we do not have 1c, 2c or 5c coins.

I then set the students a challenge in their maths groups.  Using supermarket brochures they had to "go shopping" and choose items that would feed 5 people for a main course, pudding and a drink.  Each group received a different budget - the Hexagons had a fictional $100  to spend, the Diamonds were given $90, the Circles had $75 and the Squares had $50.  They had to cut out the pictures of the food they wanted and then work out how much the food cost to see if they could afford some more items, or whether they had gone over budget.

It was great to see the class really engaged in the task, and there were some intense discussions over whether dinner should be chicken or lamb and maybe more importantly whether it should include vegetables!  Dessert seemed very important to all the groups and sweets for after dessert also featured heavily.

At the end of the lesson, each group presented their menu and told the class how much money they had spent - all had money to spare, and I would have happily gone for dinner at any of their parties.

Maths & Literacy in Room 19.

Quite often I put up a blog post for an exciting event, or some amazing art work, but not so much about what happens on a daily basis in Room 19.

So here is just a snippet from our day on Thursday of this week ....

Maths - we went back to basics with fractions, talking about what fractions are ( pieces of a whole), whether it matters what size the pieces are (yes - there is no such thing as a bigger half!) and how we write fractions as a symbol and as words.  We started with halves and the students were given different shapes to cut out and fold to find 2 equal parts - 2 halves.  They labelled them, stuck them in their books and completed a worksheet that asked them to circle the shapes that were divided into halves and colour one half of the shape in.  Some of these sheets are up in the classroom.  To reach Stage 5 in maths for Fractions students need to be able to identify the symbols (½), names (half) and regions (e.g. the shaded part of a shape) for one half, one third, one quarter, one fifth and one tenth. We will continue to work on these fractions across the rest of this term and next.

Literacy- we are continuing with reading in our groups, and in writing time our focus this term has been on Explanation writing, although we have also continued to write Recounts of our weekend and special events like our visit to Tree Adventures and our EOTC week sleepover.  Here are a few student examples of both explanation and recount writing ......

We have also done some creative writing which will lead us in to our focus on Narrative writing over the next few weeks.  We have been working on including adjectives and similes and alliteration in our writing to make it really interesting for the reader.

As part of our Literacy time we have a warm up, sometimes this is thinking of words containing different letter blends, or word families, sometimes it is words that rhyme.  

We try and find new ways to think about these warm ups which is why on Thursday we had a game of Fly Swat Rhyming Words.  I wrote a number of words on the whiteboard (jump, cot, kiss, red etc.) and then the class was split into two teams.  A member of each team went head to head with a fly swat and the first person to 'swat' the correct rhyming word to the word I called out got a point for their team. 

  We definitely like to have fun when we are learning!

Tinkering Thinking

Today I initiated a new project for the children of Room 19.  They are getting the chance to become mechanics, engineers, and generally doing a bit of tinkering.

Tinkering Thinking is a concept where students are allowed to just get hands on with machinery or equipment, some of which they'd never normally be allowed to get their hands on, and see what it's made of, how it's put together and how it might work.

The 'tinkering' develops fine motor skills, critical thinking, and allows collaborative work.  The first project is to take apart a computer base and find out what all the parts are and how they fit together.

I have supplied a computer base (with thanks to a neighbour), a set of small screwdrivers, a set of big screwdrivers and a set of pliers to help the students with their investigations.

There are some strict rules around being involved in this activity - only when the teacher is in the room and only the teacher is allowed to bring the box out the cupboard for use.  Anyone who is using the tools in a dangerous manner will be stopped from taking part, and maximum of 5 students at a time working on the item.  There is a form in the box that all students have to sign so I can keep track of who has had a turn so we can be as fair as possible letting everyone have a go.

We will wait to see what our tinkering reveals as we remove more and more screws in the computer, and maybe we will inspire some future engineers, mechanics and designers among us!

An excited group getting to grips with the computer this morning.