STEM & Blossom: November

This is one of my favorite times of the year in the Innovation Lab. Our amazing Hawks know our routines, we love our "knowings/wonderings" chats and introducing our projects at "Campfire," and students really take ownership in their projects, the Innovation Lab and their learning! We work daily on building our skills of collaboration, compromise, communication and creativity!

I hope this month brings you things that make you feel JOY and GRATITUDE! I know I sure am grateful to be a part of this amazing community!

With love and care,

Nickie Doran

AKA Miss Frizzle

• Cycle 1 (or Group A) begins 10/31-11/4
• Cycle 2 (or Group B) begins 11/7-11/10
• Cycle 3 (or Group C) begins 11/14-11/18

• Kindergarten: Egg Drop Challenge Students will start the week learning about gravity and conducting gravity experiments! Then they will work in pairs to create a blueprint of an egg carrier that will keep their egg intact! Wednesday and Thursday will be all about creating and testing their carriers with ping pong balls. We will end our week on Friday with the REAL EGG DROP test outside the lab and do our first official project Seesaw post as we share our egg carriers with our families!
• 1st: Communicating with Lights First graders will start their week exploring transparent, translucent and opaque items. They will take a survey of the lab and post photos of transparent, translucent and opaque items in the lab using their iPads. We will spend Tuesday exploring Laser Mazes, a game-based intro to how lasers work and refract and reflect light. On Wednesday, we will explore how we communicate with light and pairs will create a plan on something they will create that communicates with only light. We will continue to build on Thursday and share with our families our communication systems on Friday!
• 2nd: Habitats in a Box For this project, we level up our learning of habitats! This time, all students will conduct research independently using Epic to find out about an animal of their choosing and their habitat! All students will be given a box with a task to create a habitat of their animal within it! We explore ways to use paper in 3-dimensional ways and discuss how to make our habitats interactive. We will add extra components throughout the week such as adding moving animals or lights for an added effect!
• 3rd: Makey Makey Introduction and Conductive Instruments 3rd graders will be introduced to Makey Makeys, one of my absolute FAVORITE tech tools! These systems are plugged into computers and function based on coding and CONDUCTIVITY! You can turn just about anything into a functional button with Makey Makeys and possibilities are truly endless! Students will start the week exploring Makey Makeys and experimenting with and learning about conductive vs. non-conductive items. They will then log into Scratch (our coding program) and complete some tutorials to learn the basics. Following this, 3rds will come up with a plan to create a conductive instrument! Some of my favorites from last year: A saxophone made out of a paper towel tube, conductive drums and a piano!
• 4th: Video Mania This week, we introduce Video Mania! 4th grade students will be cycling through this project until after the new year! Each STEM time, classes will be split into 3 different sections that focus on a specific tech/media for them to explore. Students will spend their week in STEM exploring Greenscreens and DoInk (app), Stop Motion or Adobe Spark! For this first round, our video focus will surround gratitude!
• 5th: US Native Tribes and Symbols This is a POWERFUL unit! Students start the week learning about The Trail of Tears and exploring a website I have created that focuses on the five main regions of US Native American Tribes. Teams will then pick a location and become experts on their region. Following this, students will explore Tinkercad and design a 3D printed symbol that they think best represents their region. In addition, students will create a visual aide digitally using Canva or with limited Makers Materials in preparation for presentation day on Friday!

Email: dorann@loswego.k12.or.us
Website: https://www.instagram.com/stem_and_blossom/
Location: Hallinan Elementary School, Hawthorne Drive, Lake Oswego, OR, USA
Phone: (503) 534-2353
Twitter: @nickie_doran