Christmas Extravaganza Synergizing!

Today, we worked with our accountability buddies in Ms. Raymor's 2nd grade class to design and create poinsettia art work for our Christmas Extravaganza.  We worked as a team and created hundreds of decorations for the gymnasium.  Synergizing at its best!

OUTDOOR ED Fun!

Diving Into the Water... Cycle

Water Cycle

Makaila and Maria were so focused during science today! Way to go!

Inferring the Meaning of Words

For our Junior Great Books story, The Turquoise Horse, we collaborated to infer the meaning of words. We used text clues to help us define unfamiliar words from the story.

Today's Meet and Science

We used Today's Meet today in science to communicate our thinking about heat transfer in various photographs. We found Today's Meet to be a great way to collaborate and share our ideas. We learned a lot from this short activity, and this wasn't even the most important part of our lesson!

Types of Engineering

We've been researching types of engineering in the STEM Academy this week. Each team presented the findings from their research to the rest of the STEM Academy. We voted on which type of engineer we would most like to be when we grow up. We learned a lot about engineering and what qualities are important for each type of engineer.

Matter or Non-matter?

We discussed the properties of matter today after we sorted objects by whether we thought they were matter or non-matter. The activity was eye-opening and helped us to understand the basics of matter in our universe.

Welcome Back!

Our first winners of the STEM Academy "Excellence in Engineering" trophy!

Today was the first day of school!  We had a great time and learned a lot of procedures.  We also had an opportunity to work with the third and fourth grade STEM classes for a team-work/engineering challenge.  We had a busy, but fun, day in the STEM hall, and we can't wait for many more great days.  Welcome back, Believers!

These engineers were thinking critically about solving a problem.

Four heads are better than one!

In Summer!

I hope you are all enjoying your summer... and reading LOTS of great books! Mr. Brown and I just returned from our Bahamas cruise! It was awesome! I will post more pictures for you to see later. Please plan to attend your middle school orientation with your parents at the end of the summer. I hope to see you soon! Love you all!

Class Gaga Ball Game

Portable Battlefield Museum Exhibits

After closely studying major conflicts throughout US History (Pre-Reconstruction), students designed and crafted portable museum exhibits to represent a specific battle that they studied.  Some students chose to use pizza boxes that were donated from a local restaurant.  The project was well-rounded and students built their research skills tremendously.  They were very proud of the products!

Field Day Fun

Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion

Discovering Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion using Whackers. May the "Mass times Acceleration" be with you! #futurephysicists #sciencerules

Friction Experiments

We did several friction experiments today.  We did a "Gripping Rice" demonstration and a book friction demonstration.  We also discovered varying levels of friction with the soles of different shoes across multiple surfaces.  We watched a "Science of the Olympics" video about curling and determined what type of friction is used in the sport.

Diving In to Kaddo's Wall, Our Junior Great Books Story

Google Hangout for Weather Patterns

Today, we had a great opportunity for critical thinking!  We used our communication and collaboration skills to discuss weather patterns across the United States with other classes.  The classes were from Upstate New York; Irving, Texas; and Eastern Kansas.  We did this using Google Hangouts.  To prepare for the discussion, we shared a Google Doc with the other classes that included questions each class would be asking.  We researched and collected data to help us answer the questions they had.  We also used a Google My Map to mark our locations, natural disasters, flood zones, landforms, and more. We already learned so much about how the weather in Texas and Kansas moves east towards us!  We will continue to analyze the data we found and relate it to our weather discoveries in our classroom.  

Exploring Force and Motion with Toys

Zuki, Landon, and Ricardo use trucks to model how Newton's First Law of Motion works.

We used marbles to experiment with intensity of force and its relation to speed.