2019-20 STEAM Lab week 13

Well, 13 was a bit unlucky for me, as I didn't spend even a single minute in the STEAM Lab! It is time for our annual G/T screening, and I have been testing children all week. Great things still happened!

DaCamera was on campus to work with 2nd and 4th grades, we celebrated our Honor Roll and Elite Scholars, family and friends were welcomed for a special Thanksgiving luncheon, and Brighter Bites had 2 big distribution events.

Testing will continue next week, but there will brief breaks for Da Camera in 5th grade, our first GT Expo of the year, Spelling Bee, and our very first Junior Spelling Bee!

While I am not all that excited about a week of test administration, I am deeply grateful to be part of such a generous, richly diverse, energetic, and eclectic learning community! It is a sincere joy to be connected to so many amazing organizations that bring extraordinary opportunities to our campus.

This year I am especially thankful for:

Arts Connect and our amazing arts partners: the Houston Ballet, Da Camera, Houston Grand Opera, the Alley Theatre, Main Street Theater, Mercury the Orchestra, and the Hobby Center Discovery Series
Our Green School programs: Eco-Schools USA for the inspiration for our Litter Less Ambassadors, Monarch Heroes, Recycling Team, Water Wardens, and Panther Power Patrol, Keep Houston Beautiful's recognition of our student programs via the Mayor's Proud Partner awards, and Trees for Houston.
Healthy Living Partners: Common Threads, Marathon Kids, Fuel Up to Play 60, Backpack Buddies, and Brighter Bites.
Community partners: our good angels from Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church and our amazing PTO and parent volunteers who support us in myriad ways and are always willing to lend a hand wherever needed.
My digital PLN: The remarkable generosity and unbridled creativity of the online #EduMaker / #ElemMaker communities has been such a gift! I am so grateful for the Scratch, Makey Makey, Raspberry Pi, NatGeo, Fund For Teachers, Wonderopolis, and BrainPOP communities!
My Piney Point colleagues: I am so very, very thankful to all the teachers who support and participate in all the projects and programming! Without my ancillary cohort, UIL volunteers, Name That Book classes, Spelling Bee judges and classroom sponsors, Green Teacher Leaders, No Place For Hate coalition, G/T teaching team, and every single classroom teacher, teaching aide, administrative assistant, and administrator none of the extraordinary work our children do would have a showcase. Their remarkable gifts and burgeoning talents would be unremarked and unsupported. I appreciate all that you do every day to reach every child. I am very appreciative of the unstinting support of our principal, Ms. Swaby. She always finds a way to provide material and personnel support for the new programs and opportunities we bring to her attention - whether it is drones, Ballet Folklorico, or a 4th grade golf team, she is eager to make sure our children have a chance to participate.

Thank you all!

I hope everyone has a restful Thanksgiving break!

2019-20 STEAM Lab week 12

An extra-long post for an extra amazing week!

We started the week off with celebrations of our outstanding Elementary UIL Team! See detailed results HERE

They performed beautifully at Welch Middle School on Saturday! I gathered our writing medalists to share their experience with the Admin Team at their Monday Meeting.

Monday was also Veterans Day so we spent the day learning about the holiday with BrainPOP, Wonderopolis, and Britannica Kids. We learned about the symbolism of the poppy and so all classes Kinder-5^th created their own version of Van Gogh’s Poppies and Butterflies and worked together to construct a large scale collaborative collage of the same painting.

We also wrapped up this year’s Bebras Challenge in 3^rd-5^th grade! All of this meant a late start to the scheduled STEAM lab unit, but the students were up to the task. They swiftly absorbed their background information on Van Gogh (K-5) and electric circuits (3-5) via BrainPOP, Brain POP Jr., and Wonderopolis then got straight to work, coding in Code.org, experimenting with circuits with the breadboard and LED kits, Snap Circuits, and Little Bits. They investigated the art of Van Gogh and used his masterpieces as inspiration for their own impressionist works in the still life and sketching stations.

Thursday was coding only as I was off campus with several Panther Planet Protectors and their sponsors to accept their Mayor’s Proud Partner Awards from Keep Houston Beautiful. 

Our Monarch Heroes and our Recycling Heroes were recognized for their outstanding efforts to improve and beautify our city. Ms. Thormodsgaard, Ms. James, PTO President, Mr. Jose Bustos, and Ms. Leal – Monarch Hero Queen Emeritus! – were at the award ceremony at Hilton Americas Houston with us. Our Planet Protector representatives were happy to meet Mayor Sylvester Turner, 

open the ceremony with the Pledge of Allegiance, and receive the beautiful awards celebrating their hard work and achievements.

As if all this wasn’t enough, we had some spectacular arts experiences this week also! Our beloved DaCamera was at school in 4^th grade for their Deconstructing Spirituals Music Experience. Students and Teachers give Ms. Camille 5 stars for this fascinating program! 4^th grade G/T classes also had their session on figurative language with I Am Jam – this was very timely as Ms. Lee’s class has been working on a poetry project for our upcoming G/T Expo! Half of 2^nd grade had their awesome Recycled Orchestra Music Encounter! They will be each constructing their own cuica when I get back to the STEAM lab after G/T testing!

So much amazing definitely earned all grades Free Build Friday! 

It was a fantastical festival of creativity, cooperation, and construction! I love these days – they are loud and messy, but it is also six straight classes without a single complaint, argument, or problem that anyone wants me to solve! They are all 100% engaged working in pairs, groups, or solo, as they choose, seamlessly switching roles, giving and taking feedback, designing, building, reiterating, and revising without frustration! They only need me to get kits off the high shelves, be impressed with their creations, and tell them when it is time to clean up their work!

2019-20 STEAM Lab week 11

Students were hard at work on a variety of special events this week, so not much of our extra STEAM Lab projects was done. It was still a great week of learning!

It was the start of our Bebras Challenge and this year Ms. Roesch in the Computer Lab and Ms. Wheatley in the Digital Media Lab helped get all 22 of our 3^rd-5^th grade classes through the practice and challenge rounds!

About Bebras^®The Bebras^® Computing Challenge introduces computational thinking to students.It is organized in over 30 countries and designed to get students all over the world excited about computing.

K-2^nd have been very busy with their respective Eco-Schools USA campaigns! Kinder held another big cooperative campus clean-up. We are so proud of the hard work and dedication of our young Green Heroes! Monarch Heroes have earned over $600.00 through their Monarch Money drive and had visitors on campus Thursday to see their work and learn about their efforts to raise awareness and create new habitat for Monarch butterflies. Our 2^nd grade recycling team has been hard at work educating their peers and collecting the campus recycling bins every week.

In STEAM Lab K-2 made excellent progress in their Code.org courses.

Projects and Free Build fell by the wayside as every grade was out at least one day due to fabulous field trips and it was also short week due to early dismissal on Friday. Three days was just enough time to work on Bebras and get to the next level in Code.org!

5^th grade had a very special opportunity to attend a Behind the Scenes tour of Houston Ballet’s Center for Dance! They had a brief introduction to the company, a Ballet Talk about the Nutcracker, and a tour of the facility. They saw professional dancers rehearsing in the studio, working out in the gym, dance classes for the most promising of the next generation of dancers, and a peek inside the costume shop! We are so grateful to be an Arts Connect Creative Campus and especially appreciative of our wonderful Arts Partner, Houston Ballet!

Our Name that Book and UIL Team put in a good bit of practice as well! 4 members of the K-2 team have completed their first read-through of their list and are preparing to be library readers!

Our UIL team participated in their first meet of the year this Saturday at Welch Middle School. For the first time I was unable to go with them and am so grateful to Ms. Wheatley, Ms, McCord, Ms. Kindle and PTO president Mr. Bustos for managing the competition.We are so proud of our scholars!

Individual competitors placed in a number of contests (see our UIL page for details) and the team placed 6th overall out of 17 schools!

2019-20 STEAM Lab week 10

A fantastic week of student achievement!

We kicked off Monday with a reading by Name That Book team super-reader Nabaa for the Monday Admin Meeting. She chose her favorites from the poetry anthology, School People, by Lee Bennet Hopkins.

Next our Kindergarten Green Heroes combined forces and held a double clean-up! They went out during their Marathon Kids class time and again with their ancillary teachers. Great Job, Green Heroes!

K-5 made a bit of progress in their Code.org classes, but were very busy investigating the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh via Wonderopolis, Britannica Kids, and BrainPOP Jr. They visited the OSMO Masterpiece, sketching, still life and collaborative collage stations to explore their own ideas inspired by his work. 

3^rd through 5^th grade also learned about electric circuits – getting a little background from BrainPOP and Wonderopolis before exploring with the breadboards, jumper wire, batteries and LEDs, Little Bits, and Snap Circuits.

Free Build Friday featured OSMO Numbers, Words, Tangrams, and Masterpiece, LEGO Creative Builder, Early Simple Machines, Little Bits, and Snap Circuits. They apparently really loved the work stations this week and wanted another turn!

Friday saw the completion of Ms. Brown’s and Ms. Mallona’s collaborative collages – both of these class picked Almond Blossoms as their source work.  They did a fantastic job!