2019-20 STEAM Lab week 25

A great week, full of learning, making, and special events!

On Monday, K-2 classes from last week were back in the lab to wrap up their projects. We had wonderful Robo-Retells from K,

and 1^st ,

and second truly enjoyed their repurposed can cuicas!

Also Monday, we held a Black History themed Mardi Gras parade – it was a little late due to Friday’s closure, but plenty amazing! View some highlights HERE

We started the new units for K-4 this week and they are off to a great start! K is making their Green Hero videos, so they are practicing their song, conducting extra clean-ups, and sketching their version of a Green Hero.

1^st grade is creating their collaborative Monarch Movies. First, they brainstormed a list of everything they learned this year about monarch and then divided into groups to make the slides for each topic. The slides were organized into order and combined and then they practiced narrating their sections and managing our recycled film strip “viewer”!

2^nd grade is looking for more ways to combat waste on campus and to that end helped our Kinder by conducting a clean-up in front of the school. They collected a large box full of trash from just the small garden area by the Gold Car rider dismissal area. They sorted it and were shocked to see how much plastic trash is everywhere.

3^rd grade started working with Scratch. They worked through the tutorial projects at their own pace to acquaint themselves with the new programming environment and then started creating their own!

4^th grade began their Interactive Stories using Scratch and Makey Makey. In teams they selected either fiction, non-fiction, or poetry and divided their subject into pieces. Then each team member created an illustrated book page and wrote a Scratch program to animate their page. At the end, all the pages were lined up in order and everyone went down the line to enjoy the stories!

5^th grade hosted our 2^nd Cardboard Arcade for the year. They hosted Ms. Tran’s kindergarten and a wonderful time was had by all!

Friday saw our Kindergarten Eco-Schools USA Green Heroes’ annual Trash Bash. All eight of our K classes met outside for a massive litter pick-up and then they sorted the trash into categories. For the second year in a row, they discovered that plastic trash is the biggest culprit.

In the STEAM Lab we were able to squeeze in a little Free Build Friday too!

Our 3-5 Name that Book team competed on Wednesday. This group has done a great book with the book list! They have been hosting a popular series of Book Talks on the morning announcements! Check out the Name That Book tab at the top of this page to see some.Thank you to the Piney Point PTO for treating our readers to lunch!

Digital Making Club – 3^rd grader Krisha finished our first Scratch + Makey Makey interactive story! She wrote and illustrated an original story and then created a Scratch project that animated her tale. She attached copper tape to the backs of her pages to connect them to the Makey Makey and make her book interactive! The rest of the 3^rd grade is right behind her in completing the work.

4^th and 5^th grade began work on their Interactive stories today, and 2^nd grade completed rehearsals for taping their Ozobot Robo-Retell.

Our Junior No Place For Hate subcommittee started work on our next campus-wide event. They are writing their own version of Dr. Seuss' The Sneetches.

Saturday, our UIL team competed at Northside High School in Oral Reading English and Spanish and Creative and Ready Writing. We are so proud of these super talented Panthers! Thanks to Ms. Hernandez and Ms. Wheatley for chaperoning, our Panther Parents for their support, and the PTO for sponsoring lunch!