STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 27

Another whirlwind week with lots of arts partners, special events, and making!

1^st grade students from Ms. Thormodsgaard’s class, Penelope and Nabaa, kicked off the Monday Meeting by presenting their personal research projects about horse breeds and family history respectively.

Alley Theatre residencies with four 1^st grade classes started. They work with each class for an hour on science and theater concepts. The big reveal is next Friday, so I won’t post ant spoiler images. I will say that the project is getting rave reviews from students and teachers! We are so grateful to Arts Connect for making these partnerships possible!

Kinder classes worked on their Earth Day mural and code.org. They relaxed and celebrated on Friday with a Free Build Day and painting! Ms. Allende’s Green Heroes decided to generously sponsor a class garden to expand our pollinator habitat, so they got to paint their bed!

1^st grade wrapped up work on their Earth Day mural also. They dedicated the rest of the week to code.org and then enjoyed Free Build Friday.

2^nd grade started work on their mural, made their Da Camera inspired recycled cuicas, and Ms. Ballentine’s class also sponsored a garden and got to paint it this week. They have already set up a water schedule to care for their plants! They were able to finish all this AND squeeze in Free Build Friday!

3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th grade all worked on their Earth Day projects, code.org, and Scratch projects. They accomplished a lot in a very short time!

STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 26

It was a very busy week back from Spring Break!

4^th grade kicked off the Monday meeting with a few exhibits from their interactive Scratch/ Makey Makey Zoo projects.

Beloved arts partner HGO was back with a new Storybook Opera for PK-2^nd. grades. Soprano Ms. Campbell delighted with The Armadillo’s Dream, a story written by Dennis Arrowsmith and prominently featuring Houston!

Again this year we are focusing on the eARTh for our Earth Day celebration. Each grade level is contributing to make sure that our Green identity is prominently displayed all around our campus.  Kinder, 1^st grade, and 5^th grade made progress on their respective murals. 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th will all be starting next week.

In addition to work on the mural, Ms. Hernandez’s kinder worked on Code.org, created story maps for Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back and retold it with the Bee Bots, and painted and planted their own class garden bed. Two students graduated from their Code.org class and starting programming in Scratch Jr.

Ms. Brown’s class worked on the Monarch Mural, made their mini milk carton Monarch movies, and worked in Code.org and Scratch Jr. On Friday all eight 1^st grade Eco-Schools USA Monarch Hero classes came outside to plant in their new garden beds! 3^rd grade Water Wardens from Ms. Massey’s class were immediately on the job, donating their recess to water all the new plantings.

Our second graders made cuicas from reused can from our cafeteria. They loved their Da Camera Recycled Orchestra Music Encounter and were thrilled to get to make their own! They also did some work in their coding course.

3^rd and 4^th grade got acquainted with Scratch, working through tutorials and creating personal projects. All six 5^th grade classes rotated through the lab to paint the background of their mural project – phase 1 of a very elaborate design!

Hoping for good weather next week so we can finish up the K, 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th grade murals and clean up and reseed the rest of the garden beds!

STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 25

It was another fantastic week in the Piney Point STEAM lab!

Kinder worked cooperatively to make story maps for Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back for the Bee Bots and then created algorithms to reenact the story.

1^st grade made an incredible start on their Earth Day mural in the library. So far, 6 of our 8 classes have worked on it and it is really coming along! Thank you again to Ms. Belmarez for sketching the outline of our winning design. They also made their mini-milk carton Monarch documentaries and shared some of their Odes to Monarchs inspired by their Da Camera Greek Odes Music Encounter. A couple more 1^st graders joined the ranks of Code.org graduates this week too!

The 2^nd grade Green Hero recycling team make cuicas from reused materials – cans saved from a trip to the landfill thanks to Ms. Telfah and her hardworking staff in our cafeteria!

3^rd grade started work on their Lost in Space interactive planetarium projects. They began writing programs to share their research on the planets from NatGeo Kids and NASA resources.

4^th grade completed and showcased their Zoo projects. They researched an endangered animal of their choice using NatGeo Kids and the San Diego Zoo resources, then created a model from reused and repurposed materials and wrote a Scratch program to share their learning. They connected their projects to a Makey Makey for an exhibition at the end of the week. Several early finishers made a start on some of the Earth Day projects.

5^th grade started work on their bookshelf projects. This is meant to be an ongoing project to collect their reading reflections, so it will develop with each trip to the library. They also started work on some of the Earth Day painting projects.

Da Camera was here for Music Encounters for 3^rd and to bring the Butterfly Ballet experience to our remaining 1^st grade Monarch Heroes! Our arts partners are the best!

Free Build Friday wrapped up our week with a celebration of the STEAM lab’s essential goals – active collaboration and effective communication in the service of design, making, and problem solving!

STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 24

A week of amazing Arts Integration, student academic and creative excellence, and learning!

The lab was closed due to testing this week, so I loaded up a cart and took our STEAM activities on the road!

We started the week with Ms. Leal’s 1^st grade Eco-Schools USA Monarch Heroes sharing their Monarch Odes with musical accompaniment for the Monday Meeting. This is their independent application of the Da Camera Greek Odes Music Encounter they had just a couple of weeks ago. The K-2 Name That Books students recorded a couple more book reviews in the TV studio and Da Camera percussion artist Mr. Brady arrived for the 2^nd grade Recycled Orchestra Music Encounter – all of this before 9:00 a.m.!

Kinder and 1^st grade created mini milk carton film strip viewers. K turned our read-aloud, Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back into their own mini movie and was introduced to Scratch Jr while 1^st grade summarized their Monarch Hero researches into a mini documentary! A few more 1^st graders graduated their Code.org course too!

2nd grade made their own cuicas – we asked our always supportive cafeteria manager, Ms. Telfah to save cans and then assembled the traditional Brazilian instrument with a nail, a skewer, and some tape! They learned about the instrument during their Da Camera Recycled Orchestra Music Encounter and were thrilled to make their own!

3^rd grade did some research on BrainPOP and learned to employ nested loops in Code.org while 4^th grade started work on their interactive zoo project.

Thursday our 3-5 Name That Book team had their contest – they have done a great job creating digital projects for their reading and also filming reviews for the morning announcements!

Friday, Da Camera brought the Butterfly Ballet Music Encounter to 4 of our Monarch Hero classrooms – the other 4 will have their turn next week. This experience is one of the highlights of their year-long project. We are so grateful to the incredible talented musicians that bring our curriculum alive through their music!

I can’t wait to see what next week’s groups make!