Lots to Wonder About

We used Wonderopolis to answer some of the questions we put on our Padlet yesterday. We also discovered some really wonderful about Wonderopolis. The articles have a read aloud feature. This made the information accessible to all of the students. I had planned for this to be a short part of our day but the students were enthralled so spent more time exploring the wonders. The staff and I enjoyed watching the students navigate their learning and find answers to their questions.

After exploring and learning about helicopters, robots and tigers, the older students learned about coding functions with Mr. Wilson and Mr. Berkley. We are fortunate to have amazing AmeriCorps Members working in our summer program. They connected the idea of functions with the coding the students have seen on Code.org. The students then made a key chain with beads to represent a function. This lesson came from Thinkersmith.

The first and second graders made their own discoveries using the Epic app on the iPads. We searched the "read to me" books and learned about monster trucks, volcanos, owls and heard some great stories. The students then filled an index card with an idea from the book. These cards will be added to our wall of summer reading.

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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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