Mrs. Mulvaney’s class participated in a STEM activity for Virginia Studies! Check it out below:
Virginia Regions STEM Activity from Tina Coffey on Vimeo.
Tag: oge
Who’s New at the GeoZoo?
Students in Mrs. Sharp’s 5th Grade class created creatures using their geometry skills to populate “The Geo-zoo.” Mrs. Sharp had done the activity years before using paper and shapes, but wanted to engage her students by using the iPads. We quickly were able to transfer the activity to a digital one.
Thanks to the iPad apps Geoboard, Pic Collage, and Dropbox, students were able to complete a project based activity (that normally was done as a homework project) within one class period. By the end of class time, Mrs. Sharp had a great understanding of her students’ strengths with Math SOL 5.13 (The student, using plane figures (square, rectangle, triangle, parallelogram, rhombus, and trapezoid), will develop definitions of these plane figures; and investigate and describe the results of combining and subdividing plane figures.)
Check out the process below:
The best part was that the students were completely engaged and absolutely loved their creations! Many even posted them on their blogs :
Rock Star Laser Robot by Double O Cleo
The Triangle Vampire from by Minecraft02
Tari the Tri-con by I Love Lax
Here are few examples of their awesome work:
If you are interested in doing a similar activity with your class, here is our STEM (Children’s Engineering) design brief and a couple versions of rubrics.
Let me know how it goes! And…if you are at one of my schools, I’d love to come in to help! Ask me! 🙂
Learning about Rosa Parks with iPads
This past week, fourth graders at in Mrs. Mulvaney’s, Mrs. Downey’s, and Mrs. Wallace’s reading class have been learning about Rosa Parks while reading the book, Rosa Parks Freedom Rider by Keith Brandt and Joanne Mattern.
To augment what they were learning in the book, they also practiced research skills to learn more about her. They used Mobicip, Popplet, and Videolicious to create videos about the facts they learned.
The project started with Mobicip. Because Safari is not filtered very much in our school system, we have opted to use Mobicip instead. Mobicip looks a lot like Safari (with tabs and a search box) and allows students to save images in the same way. Students practiced finding relevant websites to find facts about Rosa Parks and saved copyright friendly pictures of her to the iPad Camera roll.
Once students had saved pictures and done their research, they used Popplet to create a concept map. This concept map wouldserve as a storyboard for their Videolicious videos.
Finally, students partnered up. One student opened up the popplet they had created on one iPad and the other student opened up Videolicious on the other ipad. The students choose the pictures they wanted for their video. Then, the second student videoed the first student while he or she used their popplet as a guide.
It was great fun and the students learned a lot…and it was very easy. It was nice to be able to research, brainstorm, and create all on the iPad right in the classroom.
This project also made it easy to see where there were gabs in the knowledge of students, which teachers then could address.
Take a look at a few of their final projects!
Rosa Parks Example 1
Rosa Parks Example 2
Stacking Oreos! (and graphing them too)
A few weeks ago, students at Oak Grove and Clearbrook went Oreo crazy! They brought in packages of the yummy cookies and tried to stack the tallest towers. But it wasn’t just for fun…it was part of a global project with students all over the world participating! You can learn more about the Oreo Project on Jen Wagner’s website. This was the 12th year of the project, and this time 15,501 students participated from 719 different classes.
After stacking oreos, different grade levels participated in different activities with the oreos, from science to math to writing. Many classes created Excel Spreadsheets showing the average cookie stack, or the mode, median, mean, and range of the stacks. They even used excel formulas for their calculations!
A few examples of their spreadsheets are shown below!
Mrs. Beir’s Class (Clearbrook — 3rd Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/jbvts7i9vv0drnk.swf
Mrs. Hushour’s Class (Clearbrook — 3rd Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/8uxgefi4fhqylcz.swf
Mrs. Bralley’s Class (Oak Grove — 3rd Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/ffvtfngm36n4soa.swf
Mrs. Sharp’s Block 1 Class (Oak Grove — 5th Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/m0584jah192g8es.swf
Mrs. Sharp’s Block 2 Class (Oak Grove — 5th Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/20veykortu0qnde.swf
Mrs. Mortez’s Block 1 Class (Oak Grove –5th Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/5dzx3hzj54xmkji.swf
Mrs. Mortez’s Block 2 Class (Oak Grove — 5th Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/ufijsvnfudk2xjp.swf
Mrs. Grave’s Class (Clearbrook — 5th Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/x5aloxuaova6kua.swf
Mrs. Hudson’s Class (Clearbrook — 5th Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/v8rmj830gq6q0jo.swf
Exciting News: ActivExpressions!!
A set of ActivExpressions will be arriving at Oak Grove, Clearbrook, and Glenvar Elementary. I’m so excited for you and your students!! The ActivExpressions work much like the ActiVotes, BUT they also include features that allow you to ask more than just multiple choice questions. Now, using the Expressions, students can “text” in answers…and do things like put a series of items in order, or rate something on a Likert scale. The kids are going to love them!
I have a flipchart which I’ve altered (Debbie Dawson created the orginal form) that we can use to introduce both you and your students to the ActivExpressions. After you get an idea of how they work, I also have directions for creating your own activities!! If you are interested in having me come into your room with the Expressions, just send me an email and let me know.
Teaching with Technology 