On the move

This week I put out a basket of dominoes on a table in the library. I invited a group of students to make domino trains. I was not sure how this "old school" activity would compete with using the computers and iPads. The students were excited to try their hand at this activity. There were many groans and cheers as the dominoes would fall over and knock into each other. I even attempted an English Language Development lesson on cause and effect with this activity. We generated sentences based what happened with the dominoes. It was definitely a concrete way to demonstrate cause and effect. I could push the students to be more specific with describing the cause and then the effect. What a simple and engaging activity that produced authentic learning opportunities!

We used the  File Card Bridges Activity  from  Exploratorium.edu  to build bridges. The level of excitement and engagement during this activity was contagious. There was an air of friendly competition to see whose bridge would support the largest amount of pennies. The students' experience with prior engineering design projects prompted the students to be strategic with their load distribution on the bridges. I had to challenge them to test the load capacity of the center of the bridge. The final bridge design was a corrugated bridge. The students expressed disbelief at how this design would work. They were surprised to see that the folded paper support the largest amount of pennies. I then showed them a cross-section of a piece of corrugated cardboard to make a connection between their bridge design and a real-world application. A side bar in this activity mentioned a full-sized paper bridge that supported a car. I plan to show the newspaper photo from the story tomorrow. I am

The students created characters in Scratch yesterday and then wrote a description of their characters. We took a picture of their characters on the screen. I then uploaded the photos to my Google drive to create a URL address that I used to create a QR code. From there I copied the text they wrote and paired it with the QR code. Whew! It was definitely a multiple step process. When I do this again I will do it with smaller batches of writing projects. The benefits of trying this during the summer is I have more time to experiment with new ideas. I posted the students' writing and QR codes along the walls of the computer lab. I explained to the students that good readers build a picture in their head from the words that they read. Their job was to read the description of the Scratch character and picture it in their head. They could then scan the QR code to see if the picture in their head matched the picture of the character. Some of the descriptions were stronger then others as

I started our class today by having all the students view this blog on the web. It was fun to hear their reactions to seeing all the activities we have done this summer. I asked the students who they thought wrote the blog entries and took the pictures. They knew it was me. I then invited two students to be reporters for the day so that they could add their words to the blog. Scratch By Izselle Today kids at McKinney Elementary are creating a character on Scratch. Danna's Report By Danna We made characters.

 We had another successful day of canoe testing. All of the canoes floated and were able to hold a load of pennies. We had one canoe hold 74 pennies before it sank. The students were able to reflect upon their designs and had ideas for how to improve their canoes. We could probably spend another week building more canoes. I may leave out the supplies in case some students would like to try again. I love watching their reactions as they anticipate when their canoe may sink from the load of pennies. There is a mixture of celebration and disappointment once the canoes take on water and sink. Next week we will try building bridges with index cards, possibly some gardening and writing about the characters they create in Scratch. The summer is going quickly and there is still so many ideas to try and learning to do. I am excited that our average daily attendance went up this week. I also received feedback from a parent this week. I have to admit I was a little nervous when she appr

Students tested the canoes in the "lakes". All of the canoes that were tested met the 5 seconds float test. All of the canoes were able to hold a load of pennies. The largest load held before the canoe was 67 pennies! Students pondered their designs and how to improve them. Here are some of the recommendations: Using water proof glue Sealing the joints with additional aluminum foil Not using so much tape Spread the pennies out, load distribution It took some prompting questions but they were able to reflect on their design. There was an initial disappointment when the canoe sank. I had to remind them that failure is part of the engineering process. The testing of the canoes also provided an opportunity to use vocabulary. If I did this project again I would target the vocabulary and language form and functions with this experience. Verb tense, cause and effect are easily supported by this activity. I think the hands on activity makes the language usage more meaningful. I look

Canoe Construction began today. Our Young Scholars attempted to take their 2D desgins into 3D. One question I received early was, "Does it have to look like the picture?" I replied that changing the design is part of the engineering process. The students also ran into the challenge of limited resources. I only a few pieces of wood scraps available. The students then had to configure their designs to the resources available and with the tools available. I am very curious how many of the canoes will float. There were large amounts of tape and glue involved in the construction phase. We will continue construction tomorrow and test the canoes in water. The library was a busy and energetic place to be today. We even had visitors. Ms. Acuna and Ms. Rasmussen from the district office came to see our summer program. It was a perfect day to see the students deep into the engineering process. Our new principal, Mr. Welch arrived today as well. The students were eager to share their des

Week 5! We had a few more new faces today. It is exciting to see our Young Scholars. The best comment I heard today was from a student when I asked him if he was ready to go home, he emphatically replied, "No!" Everyday I try to strike a balance between keeping the students engaged and pushing them to work hard. Today we balanced by setting MobyMax goals, working in groups to design model canoes and investigating new games on the iPads. Tomorrow the canoe designs move off the paper and into reality.

I am taking it as a positive sign that we are halfway through our summer program and there is still tons of positive energy. Mrs. Gonzalez and Ms. Ayala's phone calls resulted in 5 new students today! We are expecting even more new students on Monday. My hope is that we can bring the average daily attendance to 40 students. This article affirmed our purpose for the summer program and pushing the students to work on their math skills in addition to reading. http://www.vox.com/2014/7/13/5891583/summer-slide-achievement-gap-vacation I am looking forward to comparing their end of the year MobyMax math placement with their beginning of the year placement test score. Plans for next week... Model canoes, gardening, writing a Scratch character description and an art project 

We used the Create a Graph feature of the NCES Kid's Zone webpage to graph the results of our straw rocket launches. I worked with the 3rd through 8th graders for this graphing project. For some students this was an introduction to graphing and others were more comfortable and organized their data before entering it. We talked some basic ideas of range and the median. Here are a few more questions we asked about the data. Using the data, what distance would you predict a straw rocket would go? If you were building a straw rocket, who would you choose as your partner? Why? Why is it better to use a bar graph instead of a scatter plot for this data? Entering the data was a slow process for some of the younger students. It was still worth the time to walk them through the process. They were very proud of the graphs when they created. The website was easy to use and I would definitely use with students again. I think if it was a regular part of classroom instruction they wo

We used the  Straw Rocket Aeronautics Activity  to launch rockets in the library! The simple design was accessible for all the students to participate. Our rocket flight distances ranged from 130 cm to 581 cm. I modified the activity to only measuring the distances of the flights. We did not change the cone design or length. Tomorrow we will use the data to create graphs using  Create a Graph from NCES .

We began our week by revisiting our goals from last week and setting new ones for this week. As a group they have solved almost 7500 math problems! I read the book, Tomas and the Library Lade by Pat Mora and illustrated by Raul Colon. I focused on listening comprehension. As I read the story, I stopped at points to have the students draw a picture of what they heard and then I would show them the pictures in the book. The students used Educreations  on the iPads to draw their pictures. I had them partner share their pictures and then I asked them about their pictures. I want to try this again with a shorter piece of text that we can read two times, once to enjoy the story and then the second time for comprehension. The students wanted to hear the story and it was difficult to stop the story to draw a picture and keep track of the story line. Mrs. Crowell played a math game with the students that challenged their multiplication and addition skills. I overheard one student say &q

It is hard to believe that 3 weeks of the summer program have already passed. We are averaging about 30 students in grades 1st through 8th a day. I would love to have more students come but it is also great to spend extra time with the students who do come. Nothing matches the look of pride on a student's face when they meet or exceed a goal they set. I had the opportunity to see this look of pride multiple times this week. The students took great pride in meeting the challenge of building a newspaper table. There were definitely moments of frustration and a couple even walked away from the project. My oldest students initially gave up when their design could not hold as many books as one of the other tables. I had one of those great teacher moments when they walked back into the room and stated, "we've done some planning and we are ready to try again." They still were not able to build a table better than the one that held 22 books but they impressed themselves with

After yesterday's successful day of building, we challenged the students to see how many books their table would hold. I reviewed the concepts of trusses and load distribution, using pictures of bridges and their tables. The review of these concepts prompted one student to ask, "Why suspension bridges are longer than truss bridges?" My response was that would be a great question to research and share the answer with the whole group. The students eagerly took on the challenge of reinforcing their designs to hold more books. I was also happy to see students who had passed on building yesterday decide to join in the design process today. It definitely looked like chaos at times but there was an amazing energy in the room. Winning design held 22 textbooks! Our next step tomorrow is to write about the design process. I hope the level of engagement carries over into their writing.

The students constructed tables out of newspaper and cardboard. The only requirement for the table was that it needed to be able to hold a heavy book. This activity came from the  PBS Design Squad  video of DIY Paper Table. I saw an impressive amount of creativity and collaboration as the students worked. Tomorrow we will challenge the student to improve their designs to see how many books their table can hold. We will also write about this design experience and post the writing to this blog.

I used Scratch to introduce the coordinate grid to students. This primarily and exploratory lesson since most of the students have not been exposed to integers. I had a few middle school students who could understand and apply the information right away. I then challenged the students to include at least 4 scripts with coordinates in them. The students still enjoy making backgrounds and changing the sprites best but I am working a little math in when I can. The first and second graders and I added to our addition compendium. We found examples of addition from the stories I have read aloud over the last two weeks. Tomorrow I hope to add examples with word not just equations to practice the addition vocabulary. I also challenged the students to set a new math goal in MobyMax as well as a reading goal in either MobyMax, Newsela or Reading Counts.

Jovanna Sardineta from the Hillsboro Public Library came today for Spanish story time. It is a big hit with the students and the adults. She is so animated! The native English speakers enjoy listening to her read stories, too. After reading the students' writing yesterday, I decided we needed to revisit this assignment. They made a great effort yesterday but did not complete the task. I sent the writing back to them for revision via MobyMax writing module. Then I presented a frame for the a paragraph that met my expectations. As a whole group we completed the frame then the students had the option of using the frame or writing their own paragraph. The students and I completed a paragraph about their favorite computer. Here is a sample of what they wrote after their revisions. What I like about the summer school program is that we do mobymax and Newsela. Newsela helps me by reading better and learning new things . There is another program that we learned about its ca

I tried some partner reading with the 2nd graders today. I am thankful to their 1st grade teachers who did a great job teaching them how to partner read. They knew to use rock, paper, scissors to decide who read first. They held each other accountable as they read the story and made sure to take turns. I heard more than once, "This is my page!" or "It is my turn." We also did another writing assignment in  MobyMax  . This time the students wrote about which of the computer programs or iPad apps they enjoyed the most and how it helps them learn. Here is a sample of what they wrote. My favorite program is Mobymax. Mobymax is my favorite program because we can do Math,Reading,Vocabulary,Language and Literature the best part about mobymax is their is also games!Mobymax helps us in Math,Reading,Vocabulary Language and Literature so it helps us in alot of things. For example if your doing Math but then you get bored you can go on to Vocabulary.That is why

Students arrive for the free lunch starting at 11:30. They enjoy some social time with friends while they eat and a little time on the playground, too. We owe a huge thank you to our custodian, Dan Shelley who sets out and puts away the tables each day for us.  He believes in the power of hard work and his support of the students is amazing!  Students worked on MobyMax, Newsela, Typing Club and Scratch today. The last 20 minutes they have free choice of the educational programs or apps on the computers or iPads. Everyday I read a story to the 1st and 2nd graders. At this point they have noticed the theme of all the stories I choose is math! I had one 1st grader exclaim, "More numbers!" I have been reading books that focus on the concept of addition so far. Today's book was Ten for Me by Barbara Mariconda. My goal for this week is to make an addition compendium including the addition concepts that we have covered in our stories.