2019-20 STEAM Lab week 23

A lot of great things happening this week!

On Saturday our PTO president, Mr. Bustos, came up with some volunteers to help set posts for the Monarch Hero habitat expansion and to help Mr. Keahey build beds for our new vegetable garden. 

We are all so excited about this garden that will assist us in our new goals for Eco-Schools USA, Fuel Up to Play 60, and Alliance for a Healthier Generation.

Our K-2 Name That Book team went to their contest at MC Williams Middle School. We are Panther Proud of these outstanding readers!

The PTO treated them to the buffet at Cici’s pizza afterwards.

Digital Making Club 2^nd grade continues to make fantastic progress on their Ozobot Robo-Retell. Nabaa finished the script, Penelope and Sherlyn completed the sets and costumes, and Damian finished the track – they will be all set to perform on Tuesday! 3rd grade has been hard at work on their interactive stories with Scratch and Makey Makey. 4th & 5th grade are enjoying their last week of LEGO WeDo and Scratch.

This week Ms. Lugo’s 2^nd graders skyped with Mr. Pedro Xavier in Brazil. He is a paleontologist specializing in extinction events and weather. They had a wonderful time learning about fossils and all that we can learn from them. 

We LOVE the Skype a Scientist program! And are very excited about Ms. Ballentine’s skype next week!

During regular STEAM Lab we had our first Code.org graduate from Ms. Thormodsgaard’s class, Yomi! 

Robo Retells from K,1^st ,3^rd , and 4^th grades, while 2^nd made their repurposed can cuicas and 5^th grade started Scratch.

We closed out the week with a fantastic Free Build Friday!

Next week 5^th grade will start Cardboard Arcade! This is a favorite unit every year and I look forward to what they will come up with this time.

2019-20 STEAM Lab week 22

A great week of extra-special learning opportunities!

Three amazing Skype-a-Scientist sessions took place this week! On Monday, Ms. Mallona’s 3rd grade class met Ms. Jasmin Graham, MarSci-LACE Project Coordinator at Mote Marine Laboratory. She has participated in some remarkable projects related to ocean acidification as well as her primary field of study, cartilaginous fishes – especially sharks and rays. She also Skyped with Ms. Lee’s & Ms. Martinez’s 4^th graders. The introductory materials she shared included some fantastic footage of a saw-tooth ray pupping!

Continuing the marine science theme, Ms. Thompson’s 2^nd graders Skyped with Ms. Megan Howson on Thursday. She is based at the University of Miami and specialized in marine mammal communication. The students were amazed to learn about the work she is involved in and had lots of questions. She shared some of the recordings of dolphins and whales she has collected as part of her field work which was a big hit!

We are so grateful to the Skype-A-Scientist program for making this experience available and these two remarkable women for generously sharing their time and knowledge. I can vouch for the successful creation of 75 new, impassioned ocean advocates!

Digital Making club met on Tuesday and are making marvelous progress with their second unit projects! 2^nd grade divided the labor and Nabaa is writing the scripts, Damian is creating the Ozobot course, while Sherlyn, and Penelope are the art directors of their dramatic Robo-Retell of Little Red Riding Hood! 3^rd grade is hard at work on their Scratch + Makey Makey Interactive Stories. Books have been finished and animation is well underway! I hope we can share these completed projects next week! 4^th and 5^th grade are experimenting with making and programing the LEGO WeDo 1 with offline Scratch 2.

The regularly scheduled classes handled the scrambled schedule splendidly and were still able to complete their Robo Retell and making projects! Everyone reconnected with their Code.org course and many students are on track to graduate next term!

Ms. Caro’s kinder delivered a very spirited Bee Bot Robo-Retell of PD Eastman’s classic Are You My Mother?

While Ms. Pham’s 1^st grade Eco-Schools USA Monarch Heroes impressed with their rendition of verse two of the Monarch Song! Ms. Greenhouse’s 2^nd grade did a great job constructing and decorating their Da Camera Landfill Harmonic Music Encounter inspired reused can cuicas. 

Third through fifth grade researched their science topics in BrainPOP and learned to create coded tracks to have the Ozobots help retell the science stories they learned.

And of course, what would a week in the STEAM Lab be without a little Free Build time?

Our Wrap-Around specialist, Ms. Argueta, forged a partnership for Piney Point with Common Threads. They have a nutrition program being delivered in partnership with our awesome PE teachers, Ms. Ryan and Mr. Keahey. As an adjunct to their work and an implementation for our Eco-Schools USA and Fuel Up to Play 60 Healthy Living initiatives, they are helping us install a Guacamole Garden! Ms. Ballentine’s 3^rd grade class are the lead partners on this activity and have already taken the measurements, drafted a garden plan, and calculated our material needs. Mr. Keahey has been making garden beds for us by reusing old fence sections. He came out this Saturday with PTO president, Ms. Bustos, a volunteer, and myself to work on the new beds. 

Ms. Sharon – our Common Threads liaison, brought us our first set of donated plants Thursday. We are so excited about our new garden project!

2019-20 STEAM Lab week 21

Another wonderful week in the Piney Point STEAM Lab!

K & 1 did a great job on the BeeBot Robo-Retells this week. Ms. Flores’ class really worked on the second verse of their Monarch Hero song to retell the migration story!

2^nd graders celebrated the successful assembly of their repurposed can cuicas with a mini concert! They love this chance to revisit their Da Camera Music Encounter and honor their role as Eco-Schools USA Recycling Heroes!

3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th grade researched the water cycle, food chains, and electric circuits on BrainPOP and created wonderful retell maps for the Ozobot to help them share what they learned on these topics.

This week also featured our first Skype-A-Scientist with 5^th grade! MSc. Ana Bottallo de Aguiar Quadros is a Biologist/Paleontologist affliated with the Universidade de São Paulo Museu de Zoologia, the Centre de Recherches en Paléontologie – Paris, and Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle - Sorbonne Université. She visited with Ms. Mulry’s class about her work on the evolution of snakes belonging to the Elapidae family. These include Cobras, coral snakes, Mambas, and many other venomous snakes. It was fascinating to hear about how she came to her field and what is involved in her researches.

Our 3^rd-5^th grade Name That Book team continues filming their Book Talks for the morning announcements with Mr. Huerta and are doing a fantastic job!

The K-2 team continues to share their favorites during read-alouds in the library every day. They all enjoy sharing the fantastic book lists for these contests!

The week ended with a celebration of the 100th day of school; I am excited to see what the next 75 days of learning hold!

2019-20 STEAM Lab week 20

Another fast-paced and jam-packed week of learning, making, and new experiences!

We had a super start to the week with a group from Ms. Brown’s 1^st grade class opening the Monday Administrator’s meeting with a presentation of their Monarch Migration Robo-Retell! They did such a great job that Mr. Huerta filmed them for broadcast on the morning announcements!

Monday also saw Da Camera back on campus for the second half of 3^rd grade’s Science of Sound Music Encounters.

Tuesday’s big event was a trip to the District Spelling Bee with our champion, Ginger. Her alternate, Bricelda and the Junior Bee champions came along as her personal support team. She performed splendidly! She made it down to the final 3 and went a few rounds with the eventual champions before being eliminated. Our congratulations to the champions who will represent HISD at the City-wide Spelling Bee.

Tuesday afternoon saw a fantastic session of our Digital Making club! 2nd/3rd grade are finishing their 1st Scratch projects while 4th/5th grade started work on their mBot mazes.

Also this week, our K-2 Name That Book team wrapped up their reviews for all 30 of this year’s titles! Their recommendations are airing on the morning announcements over the next six weeks. I will be posting them all to the Name That Book page by the end of the week.

In the lab it was a slightly hectic week as I was out Tuesday & Thursday and had to switch 3^rd-5^th grade classes on Wednesday to prep the G/T groups for their first Skype-a-Scientist chats! Still, lots of excellent work was accomplished.

Kinder learned Are You My Mother? and did a beautiful job on their story maps. They quickly got a hang of the Bee Bots and were conducting outstanding Robo-Retells in no time!

1^st grade also made quick work of their project. They loved the migration videos from Nat Geo Kids and were saddened to learn about the struggles to protect the overwintering grounds from the Journey North resources. Their maps were a delight and Ms. Montoya was very impressed with their Robo-Retells. 

This group made such amazing progress in Code.org that at total of 6 students graduated from Course B!

2^nd grade had their hands full as they worked on the research and met with me about product ideas for the next G/T Expo as well as their Code.org course AND making their Da Camera inspired re-purposed can cuicas!

Third grade – 5^th grade worked on their coding course and then researched science topics in BrainPOP and created Ozobot maps to retell their new science learning.

We closed out the week with our first (soon to be annual!) American Heart Association Kids Heart Challenge bike ride! It was a beautiful day and we had a great crowd of teachers, parents, and students out to enjoy it on their bikes, trikes, scooters, roller skates, and even a hoverboard!