January Update: A Busy Month Culminates in Applied Technology

I found myself with access to a stack of iPads this week and couldn't let the opportunity pass. I quickly updated my plans to incorporate a technology piece that was a perfect extension of the work and explorations we'd been doing at each grade level. Here, then, is a quick summary by grade level of what our January has been all about and then a note about how we used tech this week to enhance and extend our learning.

1st

We've transitioned into visual/spatial reasoning in January, which is a fancy way of saying we've been developing the problem-solving muscles in our brains that utilize visual information to find logical patterns in forms, shapes, colors, etc. We've used two classic geometrical tools to do this: tangrams and pentominoes. This week with the iPads we focused on 3 nice apps to apply these developing skills: Blockaders, Zentomino HD Lite and Zen HD Lite - Relaxing Tangrams. They are all free, find them for your devices!

Tangrams consist of 7 pieces

Pentominoes consist of 12 pieces of 5 sections each

2nd

2014 has been all about roller coasters! We started with some of the basic science, like how coasters get their speed and what "G force" is. Then we went into research mode and dug up some detailed information on famous coasters throughout the world. On the iPads this week, we found the perfect app to begin testing our own coaster engineering skills: Coaster Frenzy. Students have to design, test, and modify their track in order to increase speed and make the ride fun. There is also a wonderful creative aspect to designing a coaster that would be safe AND fun.

3rd

Using Benjamin Franklin's fascination with magic squares as a trigger, we've been playing around with "magic math," especially different types of magic squares. That led us over to a cousin of the magic square, sudoku, and all 3rd graders have now been formally introduced to that classic (and addictive) game. The apps we used this week were ProMagic Square and Sudoku 2. There are probably several thousand sudoku games out there, but this one was a hit for its easy interface.

4th

Well, pentominoes and more pentominoes! As you know, students created 3-D pentominoes at home using 5 6x6x6 inch cubes. We are using those in class for real-life architecture challenges, like the reading nooks we have lovingly called "pentominooks." This week with the iPads we stuck on the theme of pentominoes but with a special creative twist: students used the app iMovie to create movie trailers in which the characters, theme and title all centered around pentominoes in some way. I will share those soon in a separate post.

5th

OK, 5th is the one grade that didn't indulge much in the iPads. We've been busy, though. In January we kicked off a long-term unit on Mindset--a way of framing and perceiving the world and yourself for long-term success and growth. At the same time, we are continuing with our civilization projects. Most recently, students designed (with elaborate detail) the fictional fruits that are the basis of their civilizations. We got some inspiration for our fruit creations from a documentary called Fruit Hunters. We only saw the trailer in class, but Mr. Koch has seen the whole thing and recommends it (Netflix)! :)