STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 13

A HUGE week of Green STEAM! We had a Kinder Green Hero Trash Bash, the recycling team started a new poster campaign, Monarch Heroes finished painting all their new beds for the habitat expansion and their 4^th grade partners carried them out and placed them. 

These 4^th grade partners got a work-out this week! They helped all eight groups of Monarch Heroes cycle through the lab to finish painting, making their milk-jug monarchs, and got the last set of reused cereal box wings completed. They also cut out the plastic bottle spirals and milk jug butterflies as the plastic was too sharp and difficult for the first grade to cut through. Finally, they punched holes and attached wires to all the butterflies for the garland.

There was also lots of work in Code.org, robot-retells with OZOBOTS, and everyone’s favorite - a Free Build Day.

What a fantastic week! 

STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 12

It was a big week for recognizing Piney Point student accomplishments! I was honored to attend the Mayor’s Proud Partner breakfast Tuesday to collect an award for our marvelous 1^st grade Eco-Schools USA Monarch Heroes!

Ms. Leal, Ms. Thormodsgaard, Ms. Villanueva, Ms. Salas, 2017-18 Monarch Heroes Alex and Krisha, and 2018-19 Monarch Heroes Sherlyn, Penelope, and Fabian joined me at the Hilton Americas to receive a very well-deserved award recognizing the impact of our 1^st graders efforts to educate their community, beautify and improve their campus, and advocate for wildlife.

In the STEAM lab we cycled through five classes of Monarch Heroes new garden bed painting and started working on a new recycled art project! Everything looks gorgeous and I cannot wait until our last three groups have their turn and we start the assembly portion of the projects.

Picture Day, a couple of field trips and the Universal Kinder and 5^th grade testing led to a somewhat topsy-turvy schedule, but lots of great problem solving and collaboration went on just the same!

We closed out the week with the Marathon Kids 1^st marathon finisher celebration. It was a beautiful day to be out on our track and enjoy a run!

STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 11

Another fantastic week!

3^rd-5^th grade participated in the Bebras Critical Thinking Challenge during STEAM Lab, but K-2^nd were hard at work building, problem solving in Code.org, and storytelling with BeeBots and OZOBOTS!

Friday was our annual Mini Reading Fair and the student work on display was fantastic!

In 1^st grade Ms. Leal and Ms. Thormodsgaard’s classrooms transformed into puppet theater and they staged works inspired by students’ Name That Book favorites! Ms. Thormodsgaard’s class performed a version of Frank, the Seven-Legged Spider and Ms. Leal’s students presented The Princess and the Pea.

2^nd grade presented Aesop TV. Students worked collaboratively to retell favorite fables orally and visually with their recycled material “TV” sets!

In 3^rd grade Ms. Mallona and Mr. Briceno’s group presented their Water World play to acclaim and Ms. Massey hosted a poetry café – visitors were treated to performances of verse favorites by several of Piney Point’s top UIL contenders!

4^th grade did readings from their digital anthology “The Great Escape”. Visitors were thrilled to have a personal presentation from the author of each story!

5^th grade presented their book commercials and “sold” favorite titles to their audience members!

As if this weren’t enough for one week, our UIL team competed at the HISD Elementary UIL Invitational Meet 2 at Welch Middle School on Saturday and brought home a load of medals for their outstanding performances! Great Job, Panthers!

STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 10

A great week for creative expression in the STEAM lab!

K-2 were all about Robo-retells this week! BeeBots and OZOBOTS were the zipping around student-made story maps for The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns and P. D. Eastman’s Are You My Mother? Students also put in some time on a little Pair Programming in their Code.org courses.

3^rd - 5^th grade had practice sessions for the Bebras Critical Thinking Challenge, so every day brought a new group to the lab except for Wednesday. For Halloween the STEAM Lab classes worked in Scratch creating spooky games and animations!

K-2 Name That Book Club is making rapid progress with their book list; lead readers finished their 17^th book before everyone headed out for their Friday Book Buddy read-aloud.

Monarch Heroes have reached the ½ point towards their fall Monarch Money goal and will start painting their new garden beds next week.

Next week 3^rd – 5^th will be cycling through again, this time to participate in the actual Bebras Challenge! Good luck, Panthers!