Terrific Week 20

Terrific Week 20

We had a really productive week in The STEM lab despite the early dismissal day cutting us down to just four days. I have been so impressed by the way the students have been able to adjust their plans and productivity around short or disrupted weeks! They take work home, decide to split tasks with partners, or seek out extra time in the lab to make sure they complete projects and accomplish their goals! They are really taking ownership of their STEM lab learning!

stemwk20 from Kimberly Boyce-Quentin on Vimeo.

This week the lab hosted: Ms. Caro’s Kindergarten, Ms. Montoya’s 1^st grade, Ms. Laws’ 2^nd grade, Mr. Garza’s 3^rd grade, Ms. Gentry’s 4^th grade, and Ms. Purvey’s 5^th grade.

Kinder is making excellent progress with their Code.org Course! They are learning to write more efficient algorithms by using “repeat” blocks.

Several of Ms. Montoya’s students are just a few challenges away from completing the entire Course 1 program in Code.org!

Kinder & 1^st grade students were excited to move to the next level of their robotics course. They created challenge courses for each other using the BeeBots and were excited to transfer their coding skills from the digital to the physical world!

2^nd grade put in a lot of work in Scratch this week and I am really delighted at their increasing skill! They are getting more and more comfortable with the various types of blocks and really enjoy exploring! At this point they have worked their way through more than half of the guided lessons in the offline version!

3^rd grade took a break from their Code.org course to get acquainted with Scratch this week. They particularly enjoyed making their own “Catch” games and animating their own names using as many different visual and motion effects as possible!

4^th grade’s week was shortened even more by students’ Leader In Me campus jobs on Monday. Every 4^th grader has a job working in a classroom, office assistant, nurse’s office, or library once a week. This has been a great program that lets older students mentor, take on meaningful responsibilities, and learn important organizational and social skills. In the STEM lab they continued work in Scratch.

5^th grade spent Monday and Tuesday putting the finishing touches on their projects for the Digital Mini Fair and being introduced to cardboard and paper automata. Students designed and constructed their own models.