Low Tech and High Tech Engagement

In our summer program, we mixed off-line and on-line engaging activities. Prodigy, an on-line math game has proved to be very engaging to all of our students. The best part is that they love it and they are still working on their math skills. Win-win!

Another engaging and consistent component of our program is an off-line, old fashioned book read aloud. Our youngest students are read to everyday. Our staff does an excellent job of asking the students questions and making connections to the stories with the students. The list of books we are reading this summer came from the KQED Mind/Shift blog. One of the blog entries included a list of picture books that support spatial skills development. Another blog entry included picture books that have diverse characters. The students are enjoying the books and so are the adults who are reading them. We are all enjoying being learners together.

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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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