We had a great year in science! I want to wish all of my kids the best of luck in high school! Don't forget all the fun we had!
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Below you will find group pictures with systems that worked for the 2 meter fall. Next week we will increase the fall by dropping them off the side of the stadium! Students are allowed to make any adjustments to their system they would like, but like before, no food products are allowed. Today I present the kids with the following problem: PROBLEM: Your company is the #1 supplier of chicken eggs for other planets in space. Due to territory restrictions, on some planets you are not allowed to land to deliver the eggs. You can only get your spacecraft as close as 2 meters to the ground to deliver the eggs. Your boss has given you and several others the task of figuring out how to deliver the eggs without cracking them. As a new employee of the company, you will compete with your peers to have your design chosen so that you can receive a promotion within the company. Space egg delivery is a very expensive business though and he wants to fit as many single eggs on board the ship as possible. He demands that you figure out the smallest contraption to deliver the eggs one by one to the other planets. Essential Question: What design would allow you to create the smallest system capable of protecting an egg from a fall of 2 meters? Check out our some of our PROTOTYPES! THE CONSTRUCTION PHASE
We have had a FABULOUS time in science this week participating in some cooperative learning games to help us with teamwork. Tomorrow the kids will receive instructions for an open-ended in class GROUP project so I have been putting them to the test on some great group games. Interested in trying them at home? Here's review of what we did in class: The Human Knot The Human Knot is a GREAT icebreaker to get kids to work together toward a common goal. To initiate the knot, get an even numbered group of people in a circle. Have everyone put their right hand in the circle and grab the hand of another person. Then have them put their left hand in the circle and grab the hand of a different person. PRESTO! Magically knotted! Now for the fun part: GET UNTANGLED WITHOUT LETTING GO! Some of our kids are great with problem-solving! The Silent Line The Silent Line is one of my favorite activities. This game forces kids to rely on something other than their mouths for communication. The rules are simple: No talking, grunting, humming, or mouthing of words at any point. You may use any hand signals you like but you must put yourself in a line according to what your teacher says. The two we tried were height order (very easy because it is mostly a visual thing) and birthday order (a real challenge!) All Aboard The point of this activity is to get 10 people standing on a square 25" by 25" long enough to sing "Row Row Row Your Boat". It may sound easy, but it is TOUGH! I only had one team successfully complete the mission, but I saw a lot of great ideas and problem solving skills! Hoop La This one is definitely the most fun to watch as an outsider. Split your group into two equal teams. They must hold hands (or wrists for the boys who are sensitive) and a hula hoop will be placed between two people somewhere in the circle. When the teacher says go, the teams must past the hula hoop all the way around the circle back to the starting point without letting go! I've never seen kids move so fast in my life. The Group Lap Sit I only tried this with one group.....and it was successful....for about 2 seconds! Luckily I had the camera waiting! For this, the group must get in a circle facing the back of the person in front of them. Make sure to get close! All together they sit down and balance on one another! Later this week, students will begin a design challenge in groups focusing on some concepts learned earlier in the year. In order to better facilitate working with others toward a common goal, today we took on THE MARSHMALLOW CHALLENGE! Using only 20 sticks of spaghetti, one meter of tape, and one meter of string, the students had to construct a free-standing structure that could support a marshmallow at the very top. Oh....and they had to design and build it in 18 MINUTES! Here were the rules: 1. The winning team is the one that has the tallest free-standing structure measured from the table top surface to the top of the marshmallow. That means that the structure cannot be on top of another structure or suspended from another structure. 2. The ENTIRE marshmallow must be on top of the structure. Cutting or eating part of the marshmallow will disqualify your team. 3. You may use as many or as few of your supplies as you like. 4. Teams are free to break the spaghetti or cut the tape and string. 5. The challenge lasts 18 minutes. Teams cannot hold on to the structure once time runs out. Those touching or supporting the structure at the end of the 18 minutes will be disqualified. What did we learn? Stress produces RESULTS! We had some AWESOME structures. Just check out the pictures below. |
AuthorI am an 8th grade Science teacher in Leeds, Alabama. This is my fourth year teaching science. As a teacher, I would love nothing more than to teach my kids to question the world around them and to never stop learning. Archives
May 2017
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