Wow! Easter break has come and gone and now we are into April! I don't know about the kids, but I feel this year has moved SO fast! We've been keeping busy in Challenge class!
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Sorry for the hiatus everyone! Christmas time and rolling into the new year got a bit nuts! Now that January testing is complete, we are back at it! After winter break, the 4th grade challenge group got introduced to the Lego Education WeDo program! We spent our first few weeks figuring out how different motors and gears worked as well as did some coding. Now the kids are in the building process. They have created dancing birds, and are currently in the process of building spinning tops equipped with their own release handles. They will be testing how different sized gears effect the speed and length of time that the top spins. I'm having a blast watching them!
Challenge students in grades 3-5 had the opportunity to design their own Breakout EDU games for their classmates. In Breakout EDU games, players work collaboratively to solve a series of critical thinking puzzles in order to open a locked box. The students were used to being the ones solving the puzzles, but this time they were creating the puzzles! They quickly realized that a lot had to go into designing clues for each individual lock. Each group came up with very creative stories. The 3rd grade group’s box was themed around Math Topics, the 4th grade group has a theme about “Missing Chocolate Milk” and the 5th grade was all about Christmas! The kids really enjoyed presenting these to their classmates and everyone had a successful breakout.
Today was the Kid chef event for SMS Challenge students! What is the Kid Chef event you ask!? This is a twist on the popular show Iron Chef. Each partnership received a bag full of "mystery" items and were given 45 minutes to create. There was no set direction as to what they had to do, this was a time to let their creative juices flow! Each team has the exact same supplies in their bags to start. They were allowed opportunities to add some flair to the mix by solving some puzzles. Some teams walked away with different candy items that helped make their creations even more amazing! After their time was up, each group presented to a panel of judges. Awards were given for: most creative, best teamwork, best problem solvers, neatest, best presentation, best engineering, and best overall. Below you will find each team with a brief explanation about their creations!!!! Best Problem Solvers: Kamran and Brody created a burning forest. This creation came equipped with a fireman and hose!Most Creative: Alyssa and Halle created The Lorax's forest. This creation included truffula trees falling down and a river full of fish!Best Story/Presentation: Zoie and Kaelin created a pirate ship that was under a curse of an evil witch. The boat had cannons and a plank and of course there was treasure involved.Best Engineering: Campbell and Olivia created the Eiffel Tower! A tourist was there in his car taking pictures of the amazing sight.Best Plating/Neatest: Ava and Grace were on the farm! Pigs out in the pen, a tractor about to pick corn, and of course the signature red barn.Best Team Work: Connor and Anika also created a ship. This ship was heading to Alcatraz to drop off a prisoner.Best Overall: Katherine and Kaden created a log cabin out in the snow capped mountains. Some bears relaxed inside while others took to the outdoor hot tub or hit the slopes for some fun.Wow I can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving already! My challenge students just finished their second mini unit last week. To wrap up our "Time Travel" unit the students built time machines! Using Einsteins theory of time travel, (moving at the speed of light) the kids built what they felt would be the safest machine for their traveler (an egg). The students worked with a partner and got to use a variety of different materials. When the time machines were built, we went out in the hallway and the egg passengers went for the ride of their lives. To keep with Einsteins theory, the kids threw their time machines as fast and as hard as they could. Did they all survive? Sadly no, we had two fatalities! The kids then spent time talking about their designs and about what they thought worked best or in some cases, what they would have changed!Halloween is here! For some I think the celebration started a few days ago! You have to love the craziness the holiday brings out in all of us! Today the kids got to dress up in the costumes and make the annual trip around the block for the parade. Let me tell you there were tons of fun costumes! The teachers took part too in their cowboy get-ups in support of the school play Way Out West in a Dress. Come out Friday and Saturday night to see what will be a hilarious show!
Today made me think back to last year when we hosted our first ever Halloween reading night! Boy was that a blast. I am happy to say we will be brining it back next year! What's even more awesome? We will be having a VERY SPECIAL GUEST joining us that night! I am beyond excited about this and the kids will be too! Our event will take place on October 29th next year so mark your calendars! I hope everyone has a fun, safe Halloween! Today we are having a little fun with Dr. Seuss! The kiddos are working to free their "ticket to learning" from the breakout box. If they are unable to free the ticket they will be stuck learning everything they did last year. What fun will that be!? Let's wish them luck so they can get their Ticket and Go Places this year!!!!
I can now say I feel ready for the school year! School wide testing is complete, Guided Reading and Challenge are in full swing as well as Title I groups! I am so excited to finally be getting the ball rolling with my Title I students. We will continue to utilize the Leveled Literacy Intervention kits this year! I am so thankful to have receive the "red" kit to use with 3rd and 4th graders this year! The kids really take to the topics presented in the books and we always have a great time reading and learning.
To start the year off in Challenge class, we drove into a unit on Zombies! The students have done lots of fun projects including logic puzzles, research projects, and math brain teasers. Here is a teaser that stumped all the groups: Zombie Ray, Zombie Ted, and Zombie Joe are friends. Ray is Ted's brother. Ted is Jo's brother. Jo is not Ray's brother. How is that? See if you can figure it out! Check out the pics below of some of the research projects the Challenge kiddos did! You will see a skit being put on about Zombie ants! If you've never heard about them check them out! Very interesting and a bit creepy! Also several students chose to make Survival Dolls! Survival dolls are dolls made specifically to help you in a time of a crisis or for us during a "zombie apocalypse." You hide all of your supplies (food, water, money, etc.) in a doll. Why? Someone raiding your stock pile would be much less inclined to steal a meaningless doll! If only they knew! The past two weeks in Challenge we have been wrapping up our Primary Education Thinking Series with evaluative thinking. To think like an evaluator the students had to learn how important it was to come up with observable, valid, critera. They have made decisons on the best restaruants, the best vacation spots, and even decisions on how we should be spending class time! Today to wrap up this type of thinking the 4th and fifth grade students did the activitiy "Which Chip?" They had to evaluate which was the best chip out of five choices.(Lays, Jays, Centerella, Munchos, Mrs. Mikes) Due to students picking different critera, they all did not choose the same chip. Some criterea included the following: Which chip tastes the best? Which chip is a saltiest? Which chip smells the best? Which chip has the least calories? Check out the pictures below to see everyones choices.
Quote of the day: (When smelling chips...) I could bottle this up in a candle and burn it in my room! I guess she loved the smelll! Does anyone else think November flew by!? I swear it was yesterday that I was putting up my Turkey bullieten board. November was quite the busy month around here for the students with the Verteran's celebration, Spelling B, and of course Thanksgiving break.
As far as it goes in my classroom, we kept busy as well. Some highlights that come to my brain are as follows: My Title I students have been rocking it! They have all advanced at least four letters in the Leveled Literacy Intervention program so far this year! Guided Reading has been full great learning experiences- 3rd graders have begun writing to pen pals from the highschool, 2nd grade did some really cool how-to videos, and 4th/5th graders got to work together to pardon Tom Turkey from Thanksgiving this year via breakout box. As far as challenge goes, the 3rd through 5th graders have been using their visual thinking abilities to solve different puzzles and play different games. They also saved the world from an alien invasion attack via breakout box. Who would have known that Smarties candies would keep the extra terrestrials away? I'd sum November up as a spectacular month. Now it's on to December! |
Mrs. RaabWelcome to the Blog! Archives
April 2018
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