Our First graders have been learning about weather in science, so we made a graph to show the weather for the month of January. From weather.com we found each day’s recorded weather, and found out the month has been mostly cloudy. It also surprised us to see only 4 snowy days.
Our Kindergarten classes experiment with force and motion by making ramps for hot wheels cars. They find out how many blocks high to build the ramp to make the car go the farthest.
Second graders sort a variety of matter into gas, solid, or liquid with a partner.
https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/forces-and-motion-basics/latest/forces-and-motion-basics_en.html
Our third graders used the above simulation site to figure out force and motion. They amazed me with the observations made… “Mrs. Newenhouse, look, when I change the amount of friction the girl slows down.” Or, “Look, two small people on the tug rope equal one medium.” This was a great learning opportunity!
STEM is what we do, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. DICE is how we do it, Design, Ideate, Create, and Evaluate. This method was introduced to me by Mr. Dennett, the STEM teacher at West Middle School in Byron Center. The students are definitely learning some new words here at the elementary school, and will be ready for middle school STEM in the future. Whenever we do a project we use this design thinking process to learn and understand more about the world around us. We’ll display the posters the students created in our classroom as a reminder, here are just a few of them.
