What's Happening?

The end of the semester is always a busy time in a elementary school and Laurel Mountain is no exception. Here is a listing of the different enrichment activities taking place this week.

- In first grade, I am continuing the Primary Education Thinking Skills (PETS) lessons introducing Isabel the Inventor. She uses deductive thinking and loves to brainstorm. She even has special glasses that help her brainstorm.

- In second grade, I am continuing the PETS lessons where the students are practicing their convergent thinking with Dudley the Detective. He uses clues and is a very logical thinker.

- In third grade, I started a new round of PETS lessons. This time, the students are practicing with Dudley's famous logic elimination grids and deductive thinking, which is a type of convergent thinking. The students are finding and organizing clues, taking time to reflect, putting clues together and finding an answer. We all agree that logic problems are fun!

- Last week, I completed the LEGO lessons on gears with Mr. Hance's 4th grade class. The students built models of gears, learned about gear ratio, gearing up, gearing down, idler gear and compound gears. Then, the students built a leaf sweeper and put their new knowledge of gear systems to practice. The students experimented to find the most effective and efficient leaf sweeper.

- This week in 5th grade, I am working with the Holmstrom Hawks on the NXT Mindstorm Kits. They finished building their "Star Trek Doors" yesterday and we are moving on to the programming piece today. I was excited to show the students two videos from the website "The Futures Channel" about the new rover mission to Mars. This was a great connection between robotics and the real world. Here are the links to the videos:
Part 1:
http://www.thefutureschannel.com/dockets/realworld/mars_science_lab/
Part 2:
http://thefutureschannel.com/dockets/realworld/mars_science_lab_pt2/

- This Friday will be the eighth and final meeting of our 4th and 5th grade enrichment clusters.  Next Friday, December 9, will be our Enrichment Cluster Showcase from 8:15-9:30.  Parents are welcome to come by to and tour the showcase to witness the journey in learning that our 4th and 5th graders have taken over the past eight weeks.

- This afternoon, I am excited to Skype with my new friends from Austin Elementary in Coppell ISD.  They have decided to move forward with implementing SEM at their school and they asked me to join in on the discussion with their staff.

- Finally, on Friday I will be presenting at the TAGT Conference.  I will be participating in the Curriculum Potpourri on using interest surveys to help with student motivation and building community within the classroom and school.  

So, a very busy week with lots of great stuff going on.  Continuing to develop the whole child.... 

Not for the Weak at Heart....literally

Check out what our future doctors in the "Is There a Doctor in the House?" enrichment cluster did last Friday.  They got to dissect pig hearts! 

Dr. Ann Soo (a Laurel Mountain parent) brought the pig hearts to the enrichment cluster meeting.  She also brought along scrubs for the students to wear and an informative hand-out on the heart.  They had a discussion on the parts of the heart, how the heart works and the cardiovascular system.  Then, the students had a chance to get their hands dirty by opening up the hearts.

Thank you Dr. Soo for lending your time, talent and expertise to our students.  I think we have some future heart surgeons in the making.

Continuing to develop the whole child...

3rd Grade Community Service

The third graders at LME trick-or-treated for Unicef this year as a community serviceactivity.

The children were shown a video of children in other parts of the world that depended on donations from Unicef to clothe, feed and provide medicines for them. We talked about how, at LME, we are fortunate to go to school, have plenty to eat, clothes to wear and when we are sick, go to the doctor.

The third graders decided that, "YES!" they wanted to help other children in the world and were committed to trick-or-treat for Unicef.

We are all very proud that over $1,100 was raised! This will buy a lot of very necessary items for children less fortunate.  Way to help out 3rd graders!

Sharing interests through bread

Our first grade students are learning about bread and grain in class. They are getting to taste and learn about different breads from around the world, how bread is made and learning how bread is a part of cultures from around the world.

This morning in Mrs. Clements' class, Mr. Webster (Clements' Cub parent) came in for the bread unit and actually made Boule with the kids. He taught them so much while he did it. But the best part, according to Mrs. Clements, was that he talked to the students about how cooking is a passion and interest of his. This was a great example of enrichment, and not just on Fridays. 

How exciting to combine cooking (a top interest area in 1st grade) with a curriculum unit in first grade.  And then the icing on the cake (or should I say bread) was having a demonstation by a parent who shared the same interest as the students. 

Continuing to develop the whole child...

New this Week

Even though it is the week before Thanksgiving break, we have many new enrichment activities taking place at Laurel Mountain.

This week, I will be starting new Primary Education Thinking Skill (PETS) lessons in first and second grade.  In first grade, we will start to talk about Isabel the Inventor, who uses divergent thinking.  She loves to brainstorm and think of new ideas.  Ask your first grader what tool Isabel uses to help her brainstorm.  In second grade, we will continue learning about convergent thinking with Dudley and Sybil.  In this lesson, the students have to figure out the patterns in some grids using visual clues.  These lessons will be taking place this week and the week after Thanksgiving.

Mrs. Hein's fifth grade class started their NXT Mindstorm lessons today.  I have really gotten these lessons down to a science, since is the fourth class I have worked with.  Today, I did the introductory lesson about robots and the students started to construct their "Star Trek" doors.  The Heroes did a super job of working together in teams and taking turns building and gathering parts.  I was very impressed.

Finally, I started working with Mr. Hance's class on the LEGO lessons focusing on gears.  We discussed input, output, drive gear, driven gear and gear ratio.  Then, the class began to build a model of a gear. Tomorrow we will discuss the gear they built using the LEGO Educational Kits and continue to build other gears.  We will then move on to pulleys.  Eventually, the students will get to build a "leaf sweeper" and do some a variety of trials to see which gears and pulleys make the sweeper work the best. 

Continuing to develop the whole child....

1st Grade Enrichment

The first grade students are learning about maps and directions. In Ms. Wilson's class, Mr. Shepherd came in on Friday and showed the class some maps he used for work.  The maps were of the area around Cannon Lake where they were running new electrical wires.

He also showed us a map he used when he was in the Marines at Camp Swift. It showed where different teams went for their maneuvers and training exercises.

Finally he showed us how to see LME on the computer using Google Earth! The kids loved it. It was a great addition to our map study.

What's Inside My Body?

What's inside my body? Miss Lofaro's Leapfrogs studied bones last year as first graders, but they wanted to know more about the human body, so they did just that.

They read some books and saw a PowerPoint presentation so that they could learn more about the heart, lungs and digestive system (esophagus, stomach, liver and intestines).

Then they created a wearable poster of what the inside of their body looked like! Check it out in the pictures below.

PETS Update

This week starts my second round of PETS (Primary Education Thinking Skills) lessons in 3rd grade.  Over the next two weeks, we will continue to focus on convergent thinking.  With convergent thinking, you read and organize the clues, reflect and think about the clues, use clues together and come up with an answer.  The students will solve some more puzzles that the friends in the Puzzlers Club created.  Ask your 3rd grade students which friends in Crystal Pond Woods use convergent thinking.

In second grade, Dudley is helping Sybil clean her lab.  Dudley and the students use analytical thinking to label the containers of specimens in her lab.  Then, we use deductive thinking to put the containers in a certain order on the high shelf in Sybil's lab.  Deductive and analytical thinking are both types of convergent thinking. 

Finally, in first grade the students are working on deductive thinking.  Dudley has created a party game for Felix Frog's birthday party.  The students use a Venn Diagram and deductive thinking to identify everyone at the celebration.

The PETS lessons are fun and challenging.  I love the fact that each grade's lessons carry over to the next year.  Therefore, the students are using their prior knowledge about how we think to help them solve the current year's puzzles and problems. 

Continuing to develop the whole child...

Apple Day!

The Donna Lee Lovebugs love science and cooking!

Since apples are plentiful this time of year, each Lovebug brought an apple to school for us to compare, sort, measure, investigate, and record the data. Then we used all of the apples to make applesauce.

First we had to read the recipe and follow the directions. We washed our apples, chopped them, and added all of the extra ingredients to the cooking pot. The "secret" ingredient is brown sugar! Yummy!

While we waited for it to cook, we did an experiment with apples: Does the inside of an apple change color after it is cut? We predicted and recorded the data in our Science Journals.

After PE, we checked on our experiment and wrote down the results.

Science and cooking is just a favorite with this age group. Plus, you get to eat your work!

Star Trek Door Pictures

Here are some pictures from the "Star Trek" door building with Mrs. Castro's class.

Reading building instructions from the computer.

Searching for the correct parts.

Problem solving with Mrs. Levitan

A completed door!

Another week, another door

This week I am working with Mrs. Castro's Cougars on building and programming with the NXT Mindstorm LEGO Educational kits.  Once again, the students are building the Star Trek doors.  These doors will open when triggered by the touch sensor.  The doors will play music as the open then the light sensor will tell the door to stop.  The door will stay open for a specific amount of time that is decided by the student. 

Today, the students are busy building the door with the NXT hardware.  The students are learning that it is very important to follow EACH and EVERY direction.  One missing peg, one wrong beam and the door will not work.  And then the door will have to be rebuilt.  There is lots of teamwork and problem solving happening today. 

Tomorrow we will start programming the doors using the NXT software.

Continuing to develop the whole child...