Canoe Floating Continued

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 approached me to ask me if I was open to feedback about the program. She has two children coming almost everyday and I have pushed them to work hard and to be independent students. I was afraid that they were unhappy from being challenged. It was a huge relief when she said her children love coming everyday and are excited about the summer program. She wanted to give me the feedback because she is hopeful we will do it again next year.

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Ollies and Math

Thanks to generosity of Chevron through Donors Choose , my math class experienced a new mobile technology, Ollies! Ollies are programmable robots made by Sphero . We used the app, Macrolab to program the Ollies. I modified a lesson from the Sphero website to teach the concepts of measurement and data. The first day, we explored how to program the Ollies and how changing the variables in the program affected what Ollie did. The students recorded data to capture what they were seeing. On day 2 it was time to be more methodical with our data collection. Students only changed one variable at a time. This allowed students to discover the relationship between time and the distance that the Ollie traveled. The students changed the variable of the delay between the roll and stop commands to develop this understanding. There was definitely a lot of excitement and motivation to learn measurement. On Day 3, we analyzed the data recorded from each group. There were some noticeable differences

Roller Coasters

The students chose words to describe roller coasters. We recorded them using Answer Garden . I think it also describes what building roller coasters is like. There was a buzz of excitement as groups of students designed and constructed marble roller coasters. One of the student remarked, "This doesn't look like regular library time." He had just asked me if he could tape the roller coaster ramp to the wall and was shocked when I said, "Of course." The students were so engaged with their projects that they did not notice a visitor from the Hillsboro Tribune . Kathy Fuller came to learn about what was happening in our building this summer. We are proud that we will be featured in the newspaper. I will make sure to include the link in a future post. We will be continuing our roller coaster construction tomorrow. I am very thankful that our custodial staff is supportive of these messy projects. This video captures the feelings expressed in the wordl

Halfway

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

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