In 3rd grade we have been learning how to design a solution to a problem in which a device functions by using scientific ideas about magnets. Each team was given a different problem, such as, “Your teacher has some paper clips stuck on top of her cabinets. She isn’t tall enough to reach them. Your task is to design something that can retrieve the paper clips.” Students were given some items to use in any way they wanted-they could use some of them or all of them! Together they designed a solution and then tested their design.

In Music with Mrs. Blair we have been learning about Rhythm and Tempo. To practice, we listened to Vivaldi’s (winter) while ice skating on paper plates in the classroom. Fast and slow, loud and soft. It was a great time. We have some talented skaters at Meadow Brook. 

In Computers we have been busy learning new skills.  Kindergarten has worked on iReady. They passed off logging into iReady without their cards! First and Second Grades have worked hard to pass off logging into the computers without their cards.  First Grade is practicing logging into the Chromebooks and are getting faster.  First thru Third Grades have gone on virtual field trips, practiced spelling words by unveiling a mystery pixel art, made an animation on ABCYa Animate and retold a story using Google Slides.  

6th Grade had the awesome opportunity to have our school counselor come in and talk to them about future careers. It is important to 'Begin With the End In Mind'. All the 6th graders took an online interest profiler that categorized their interest into different categories. Once they were able to find out what category they were most interested in, they were then able to look up jobs in that category. Each job gave them an overview of the job, the education required, local schools that provide that education, and other related jobs in that field.

This week my class learned how to work as a team with our phenomenal counselor, Mr. Ledesma. He asked them to build the largest rocket ship in their table groups. Once they were done they talked about what made working in a team easy and what made it hard. Finally they talked about what they would do differently to work better as a team the next time they had the opportunity. The students shared some great ideas and really understand what it takes to work together! 

This year in science for First Grade we get to learn about sound! We learned about what makes sound and then using sound to communicate. To help us communicate with sound professional sound engineer, Owen Peterson MPSE, came into Mrs. Peterson’s class to teach them about using sound to communicate in movies. Mrs. Peterson’s students transformed into foley artists and learned how to replace all the sound for a short cartoon film. Thank you to Blender for allowing us to use their animation to learn about sound! Here is a link to Mrs.

Mrs. Brown's class had the opportunity to work on teamwork, collaboration, and engineering skills to try to build the largest spaceship possible using only 3 pieces of tape, marshmallows, spaghetti, and one styrofoam cup.  The winning group was 28.75 inches.  It was fun to see how well students worked together.