Skip to main content

Lego Construction Zone



How many teachers get to use Gorilla Glue at work? My office manager is always shaking her head at the receipts I submit for reimbursement. She has given up making sense of what I am buying but she knows the kids are enjoying it. My latest project involved a limited number of items (18 large Lego baseplates, Gorilla glue and a caulk gun) and a lot of STEM integration.
I started by asking a group of 5th-grade math students, how many Lego baseplates we could fit on a wall? These questions were followed up with how much would that cost and what are some compelling reasons for putting Lego baseplates on a wall? The students had to find the answers to these questions by doing research and writing persuasive statements. I had given them a budget of $300 for the project. They created Google slide presentations to convince our principal and custodian that this was a really good idea. (The students didn't know that they had agreed with the idea.) Our custodian did have some concerns about how the baseplates would be installed on the wall. This changed our parameters for the project which was great because it also kept us within our budget. When does that ever happen?
I had done some of my own research. I need to give a big thank you to Diana Rendina and her blog, Renovated Learning for guidance on this project. I knew about how big an area we were going to cover and the approximate cost. I was inspired by the reasons the students gave for why they thought this project was important for our school community. We spent multiple days doing research, creating the presentations and revising our calculations. The students stayed engaged in the process from beginning to the end. I think they especially liked writing their names on the wall that the baseplates covered so that they were a permanent part of the wall.


Students were involved in all stages of this project.



You can view the presentation on this link 

You can view the presentation on this link
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
2 comments
Read more

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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 
2 comments
Read more