Welcome Back, Panthers!
We will be starting the year off with code.org, a math/ art challenge based on A Perfect Square, lots of garden art and garden maintenance to support our Green Hero mission, and a special semester long exploration of Antarctica to help me prepare for my Nat Geo Grosvenor Teacher expedition to the white continent this winter!
Another fantastic week - the new year is off to a great start in STEAM Lab!
Ms. Hernandez, Ms. Brown, and Ms. Giron's did a wonderful job learning about the Galapagos penguin, making a their cardboard models, and learning to use Scratch Jr to create a project sharing what they learned.
K & 1st went out for the year's first campus clean-ups and made some excellent observations outside - Ms. Brown's Monarch Heroes spotted 7 chrysalides and more than 20 larvae.
3rd grade's second week of X3 with Houston Ballet was even better than the first as they named their teams, learned their first segment of choreography, and played an awesome game called Fruit Salad.
The maze projects by Ms. Mallona's class were really fantastic!
Ms. Hernandez & Ms. Brown's students came back to play Ms. Reilly's 4th and Ms. Limon's 5th grades' Cardboard Arcade and agreed they really knocked it out of the park!
@PineyElem in #STEAM Lab Ms Limon's 5th & Ms. Reilly's 4th hosted @jackiebrown01 & @Lid__Hernandez 1st & K classes to their #CardboardArcade. They did a great job working through the steps of the design process to construct fun/ functional/sturdy games. pic.twitter.com/mhQawG0kiv
— kimberly boyce (@kboyceq) January 14, 2022
4th grade started their Create an Opera residency with Houston Grand Opera this week and it is clearly going to be an amazing project!
The classes designed and executed some really gorgeous banners this week as well!
Welcome back to STEAM Lab! I am really excited about our Cardboard Constructions units.
K-2 will researching animals of the Galapagos using resources created as part of a Fund For Teachers fellowship last summer to create cardboard slotted animals that they will then incorporate into a Scratch Jr. project sharing facts they learned. See the amazing work done by Ms. Colmenero, Ms. Maldonado, and Ms. James' classes here:
3rd grade is beginning their X3 residency with Houston Ballet - this is an extraordinary opportunity for all 200 students to work with dancers and a musician to Explore, Extend, and Excel through movement. It is a huge hit with students already and they have only learned the warm-up routine!
In STEAM Lab this group is practicing the design process by creating recycled material marble mazes. They draft a design, create a model in LEGO to test it, revise and refine their plan and then construct it using techniques from the Exploratorium's Tinkering Studio. Here is a look at how Ms. Martin's class did:
4th and 5th grade made a spectacular start to this unit's Cardboard Arcade project. They also started by practicing with the Cardboard Connectors from the Tinkering Studio, then drafted a design for their game, produced a materials list, and started building. Ms. Lee's class hosted Ms. Maldonado's 1st grade and Ms. Mulry's 5th grade invited Ms. Colmenero's kindergarten. Everyone had a fantastic time!
All classes (except Ms. Maldonado and Ms. Mulry - her banner was done previously) designed and created a special banner for their rooms as well.
I will be engaged in HISD;'s annual Universal G/T screening for Kindergarten and 5th grade students and the neighborhood testing for 1st-5th grade students for the next few week, I look forward to welcoming classed back to the STEAM Lab soon!
This week was cut sort by some testing, but some fantastic work on the habitat expansion was completed by our Monarch Heroes, and some creative building, and wonderful designs for the class banner projects by the STEAM Lab classes as well.
