STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 31

Happy Earth Day! At Piney Point we try to treat every day as Earth Day, but this day we do host an annual celebration!

On Monday we officially unveiled all the Earth Day art projects. Students from Ms. Massey’s class were our docents and directed everyone to the work videos. Everyone had a wonderful time and was very impressed by our students’ talent and commitment to our home planet! See the videos HERE

As if Earth Day wasn’t enough excitement for one week, we also participated in the District-wide G/T Expo. We are only allowed 3 projects – which was almost impossible to select as we have so many brilliant students creating so much fantastic work! We presented examples of personal, class, and collaborative projects. David from Ms. Leal’s class and Nabaa and Penelope from Ms. Thormodsgaard’s class represented the school splendidly!

In the lab, we visited the building stations, OSMO, Scratch, and Code.org in K-4 and 5^th grade started work on their Cardboard Arcade. Unfortunately, I had another commitment on Friday so their play day with Ms. Brown’s class had to be postponed until Monday, but they have turned in some outstanding games!

STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 30

Another short week, but it was packed full of STEAM learning!

Kinder had a very busy week with a field trip to the Hobby Center, a Da Camera Music Encounter, and Field Day! Since we only had a couple of days in the lab we split the time between Code.org and the building stations. They love LEGO, Keva Planks, and the fort builders!

 1^st grade recorded voice overs for their Earth Day mural information panel, enjoyed an Earth Day themed Field Day, and worked on their coding and in the building stations. 1^st graders will be representing Piney Point at the District G/T EXPO next week and were putting a few finishing touches on their products and presentation materials.

2^nd grade also had field day, a final painting day for their Earth Day mural, recoding for their information panel, Code.org, and building stations.

3^rd and 4^th grade had free choice stations this week – popular choices were: Code.org (especially Dance Party and Minecraft!), Scratch, micro:bit, painting with Sphero, LEGO Dacta and WeDo, OSMO (especially Masterpiece!), and they REALLY loved the Kinder building stations! I don’t blame them – you should never outgrow fort building and giant blocks!

5^th grade kicked off #CarboardChallenge season with our 1^st Cardboard Arcade of the year! This is our 3^rd year to hold this and it just gets more popular each year. This activity is based on Caine’s Arcade. Please see the wonderful story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faIFNkdq96U

STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 29

This was a very truncated week in STEAM lab. Between testing and training, I was only in the lab one day! However, the excellent Ms. Lan covered for me on three of those days, so our Panthers were able to get their coding and making projects underway!

A personal highlight of the week was attending the Invent to Learn workshop with the legendary Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager! This was a much-needed reinvigoration for the last seven weeks of school! As we spend so much time testing it is even more important to provide meaningful and engaging learning challenges for students. Also, I haven’t been able to carve out time to experiment with the hummingbird and micro:bit and the students are really needing me to step up my skills with these tools!

Kinder made progress in Code.org, helped 5^th grade with their Earth Day project, and had a campus clean-up. 1^st grade made their mini milk-carton monarch movies and helped 5^th grade with their project. 2^nd grade made their Da Camera Music Encounter inspired recycled cuicas, 3^rd-5^th coded and worked on their Earth Day Projects.

Next week will be another short one, but we should have 4 full days in the lab! Looking forward to putting some of my own new learning to work!

STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 28

It was a spectacular week for STEAM!

Every grade level was deeply engaged in mastering core concepts and skills via arts integration this week! Kinder finished work their Earth Day mural, made some excellent progress in Code.org, and enjoyed a Free Build Day!

1^st grade made mini milk-carton monarch movies and worked in Scratch Jr and Code.org. Four of the classes wrapped up their Alley Theatre Staging STEM workshop with a fabulous set of performances in the cafeteria on Friday. We were all so impressed with their representations of important life science concepts – they clearly learned a lot from the experience!

2^nd had a Storytelling workshop with Main Street Theater that was very popular too! Our Recycling Heroes revisited their Da Camera Recycled Orchestra Music Encounter and made cuicas. They also spent time painting Their Earth Day mural.

3^rd-5^th grade all worked on their Earth Day projects, Code.org, and Scratch projects.

In Coding Club students started making their Micro:bit mini books! We found this awesome project on the Make website:

https://make.techwillsaveus.com/microbit/activities/animated-microbook

I cannot wait to see how these turn out!