STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 21

An amazing week of non-stop arts learning experiences! Houston Grand Opera, Houston Ballet, Da Camera, and two grades had field trips to the Hobby Center!

We kicked off Monday with fantastic performances from Houston Grand Opera’s Opera to Go. It was a new production, The Elixir of Love, and was a smash hit with all our students from K-2! Tuesday 5^th grade enjoyed a Ballet Talk focused on Sleeping Beauty; later that afternoon the 5^th grade G/T classes had their Da Camera extension Music Encounter! Both Kinder and 1^st grade enjoyed field trips to the Hobby Center and, of course, celebrated the 100^th day of school.

Name That Book club members started their broadcasts of book reviews on the morning announcements and are continuing their daily read-aloud visits to classrooms. The K-2 team have started animated book retells in Scratch Jr while 3rd-5th grade have begun their Scratch "Bookshelf" project. Danilo from our UIL Spanish Oral Reading team presented to the administration team also.

As if all this wasn’t enough, our Fuel Up to Play 60 ambassadors won a contest and our Pre-K – 2^nd graders enjoyed a spirited breakfast with Toro event! There was definitely more dancing than eating as our Panther cubs showed Toro their best moves!

This week was a little unusual in the STEAM lab as Piney Point prepares for TELPAS testing. A different 2^nd-5^th grade class came every day rather than coming for the week-long unit. We took the opportunity to have free choice days for Scratch and Code.org – leading to a couple of new Code.org graduates - and to also introduce Wonderopolis and the Daily Wonder write-up. Students loved this new window onto some of the most amazing things in our world. In fact it was very challenging to detach them after they completed the assignment as they wanted to continue exploring! 

K and 1^st worked on Code.org, started work in Scratch Jr, and Osmo. Ms. Flores’ Monarch Heroes were able to start their seeds for the spring planting too!