End of Year LEGO Stop-Motion Movies!

Let's face it, when we have two huge bins of LEGO pieces sitting around and access to some cool stop-motion technology, why would we NOT make some awesome stop-motion movies as part of our end-of-year thematic summaries?

But here's the thing: Each grade level was tasked with creating a stop-motion movie that related to our theme for the year. So 5th grade, for example, had to make their film relate to "encounters" between two civilizations or groups; 4th grade's movies had to center around a piece of architecture, and so on...

First we studied some "best practices" for making stop motion with LEGOs, including considering such factors as positioning, background, lighting, movements, etc. Students learned that making a quality stop motion is MUCH harder than they thought, and requires oodles of patience and concentration. That made it an even more important exercise!

At the link below you can access a folder with all the videos. File names are labelled by student first names. Enjoy!

NOTE: We used the app "LEGO Movie Maker" on the iPads. That app is not available on Android but there are other user-friendly stop-motion apps on the Android market.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B2urbvFV8qF1c3lBaHNYNHNDR0k&usp=sharing

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Second Grade Update: Life's Ups and Downs

This semester has been all about roller coasters! In our last update post we told about some of the coaster research we'd done and how we'd explored some of the science behind coasters. Now, it was time to put all that knowledge into action and build our own mini-coasters.

Student groups were given miscellaneous supplies, such as wooden dowels, cardboard, paper cups, construction paper and tape and asked to create a roller coaster for a golf ball. There were different levels of challenges, including a basic drop, a hill, a double hill, and a loop.

This was true problem-solving and innovation! Were there lots of dead ends? Absolutely! What would be the point if it were all laid out for them? The successes felt so much better because the students had truly earned them.

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Fourth Grade Movie Trailers: They're "Pentominal!"

As you know from last week's status update, our 4th graders have been focusing on the geometrical tool set known as pentominoes. They are a crucial part of the plot in our novel The Wright Three but we are taking them even further. Most recently, students created large, 3-D pentominoes which we've been using to create "rooms" and spaces within the classroom.

Last week, we created movie trailers that revolved around pentominoes in some way. They could be characters themselves or just somehow part of the plot. They are very entertaining. We may have some future filmmakers in our midst. :) Enjoy!

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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)! :)

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1st Grade Update: Stop Motion Movies

Our research on Thomas Edison led us into the fascinating world of early animation and some of the tools early animators used to create the illusion of movement and hence, "motion pictures." One of these early tools that Edison himself was inspired by was the thaumatrope. In a previous post, you can see that we made our own thaumatropes. 

A more advanced early animation and motion picture tool was the kinetescope. It passed a series of still pictures through a view finder and gave the illusion of a movie to those who watched. We learned that the more still pictures (frames) you pass per second, the more smooth and realistic the movie is.

We applied this same concept but with help from a little modern technology. The LEGO Movie app allows you to create stop motion animation in much the same way these early machines did. It was tough to learn from all of our mistakes in just one hour, but I was very impressed with what the students created in such a limited time! Their videos are below:

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2nd Grade Update: There's a SPRING in Our Step

You know from our last update post that we'd had the LEGOs out to do some attribute sorting and a creative design challenge. Well, we weren't quite ready to put them away so we constructed a little research unit on the history of LEGO. We used the book LEGO Toys by Kris Hirschmann as well as the video below as our primary sources and created research mindmaps.

We then switched gears and focused on another classic toy--the pull back car. In our first lab, we conducted an experiment to see if the distance we pulled them back had a direct relationship with how far they went. Our hypotheses was yes! As a secondary experiment, we also compared the data between the car running on the table vs. carpet.

The next major questions was: Where is the energy coming from to make these simple toy cars move? There was only one way to find out--we dissected them!

The great discovery of our dissection was a very special machine--the spring! So THAT sent us on another research exploration, this time to gather more information about springs.

And springs are where we currently stand. This will lead us into an exploration of potential vs. kinetic energy and to the creation of a very special Thanksgiving-themed project. Stay tuned! : )

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1st Grade Update: From Light Bulbs to Motion Pictures

Since our opening unit on learning styles and multiple intelligences, we've covered LOTS of ground researching Edison and related inventions. 

We started with some traditional research using the text Thomas Edison and the Light Bulb and gathered our data into a class "big book."

One of our major research questions was to discover what material made the best filament inside the light bulb for it to last the longest. Originally, light bulbs used cotton thread for the filament. You can imagine the problem with that. After experimenting with THOUSANDS of different options, the best material Edison found for a long-lasting bulb was bamboo! Today, tungsten is the most favored material for a filament in a traditional light bulb.

We balanced out the analytical thinking required for our research with a creative challenge: design a light bulb of the future using LEGO pieces!

Next, we applied our growing knowledge of light bulbs by using the classic picture book The Important Book as a model to create our own "important pages" about the light bulb. We also illustrated and diagrammed the major parts of the light bulb to go along with it.

Then it was time to move beyond the light bulb and look at another project that Edison played a role in: the motion picture (AKA the movies!). We discussed the concept of persistence of vision that early animators used to explain how a series of still images could seem to move. Edison was fascinated during his life with one particular, very simple animation device called a thaumatrope. Here's a video with the instructions we used to make our own. The students learned by trial and error which methods worked best and created some very fun, animated scenes! 

Our next step is to take a technological leap but use the same basic methods to create a more complex movie. We'll be using a stop-motion movie maker app on the ipads. Our next update should be some movies for you to watch!

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5th Grade: To Boldly Go...

The encounter of civilizations is our driving theme in 5th grade this year. To start generating a list of the attributes of civilizations and also to explore what kinds of consequences arise out of two civilizations encountering each other, we read the book Encounter by Jane Yolen:

Next, to extrapolate this concept of an encounter and put our own current civilization into the story, students created comics that imagined the first contact between modern humans and an "alien civilization." Yes, they have been a lot of fun, but creating them also forced us to reflect on the basic attributes of civilizations (i.e. government, economy, currency, clothing, language, number system, holidays, norms, etc.).

Then we read the story of a boy who was so fed up with his own civilization, who felt so left out and unrecognized, that he literally invented his own from the ground up. Meet Weslandia:

With Weslandia as our inspiration, we've now begun the gradual process of designing our own civilizations. We are starting with Math, or course! OK, it wouldn't have been everyone's choice, but you have to start somewhere. So far, we've studied the number systems of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Romans and Greeks. We'll also study some more modern systems, like binary, before we start creating our own number systems.

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4th Grade Update: The "Wright" Stuff

Other grade levels are enjoying novels as a supplement to their units this year, but 4th grade is the only group using a novel as the primary launch pad for all their explorations. The novel is The Wright Three by Blue Balliet. Here's a book talk/preview:

To set a foundation for reading, we first built up some background knowledge on architecture in general, including some basic concepts and a scavenger hunt of some famous buildings. This included a DI-like design challenge where the students had to create skyscrapers out of very limited materials (tape and two types of paper) in a very limited time. They did quite well!

Since the book centers around the Robie House, a work by Frank Lloyd Wright, we then did some background research on Wright, and each week we are building on that knowledge.

Another huge connection from the novel are pentominoes, a set geometrical and mathematical tools with all kinds of uses. We started with 2-D pentominoes and worked our visual-spatial skills with a number of challenges.

One student designed "Texonimo" in honor of the Lone Star state.

 We've since pulled out some 3-D pentominoes and that opens up a whole new set of challenges!

At the same time, the book itself has made us intrigued with The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. None of us understand the connection yet, but it keeps popping up in the story. This trailer of the old black and white movie sure got our attention, too!

Our most recent challenge that demanded creativity, innovation, cooperation and organization was another design challenge using LEGO bricks. In our "Think Like an Architect" challenge, students were presented with a client (a family of 4) with specific needs in a home. They then had to design the home to meet those needs. We had some wildly innovative samples!

Soon we'll delve into the more technical and mathematical aspects of architecture, but this was a way to understand the creative problem solving with which an architect approaches his or her work.

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Welcome to GT in 2013!

Dear Parents and Students,
I'm so excited about kicking this year off. As you can see from the title of our blog this year, the theme is "Inventors, Creators, Dreamers and Architects." At each grade level we will be focusing on something to do with that theme. For information on specific grade-levels, click the "Themes" button above and select the grade level you're curious about.

Another side theme that we will focus on in every grade level is "Word Play." These will be fun, quirky challenges and projects that will build our verbal intelligence, our vocabulary and most definitely our sense of humor.

We will start classes the week of September 9. Are you excited? Until then, please click around the blog and get familiar with how it's laid out. It will be a busy place for us this year.

Parents, consider subscribing to the blog by email (on right) to get a little update whenever a new post is up.

In the meantime, to get you inspired with a spirit of invention and dreaming, take (another) look at the amazing video: "A Day Made of Glass."

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