Happy Friday! Taking Action! Update October 7th

Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone!

Agenda/Reminders:
Please look for an article or example of taking “ACTION” (newspaper, online, magazine, brochure, etc.) and bring it on Tuesday. You can also respond to this post if you found a link online and want to share it with everyone.

Look at ideas for solar cookers! We will be building a small one in class. Bring a roll of foil and styrofoam from home for cooker insulation if you have any.

Individual photo day is next Thursday, October 13th. No school on Monday, October 10th!

 

What we did today:

We began the day by giving time to read a few more articles from the blog on human rights. The class had some great questions that we discussed together. Then, we went to the unit board and put up some blue stickies to help students see how everything they have been studying fell under our unit focus statement Open-mindedness and innovative thinking create change in the world. By putting all of this up on the board, we realized just how much we have covered in only a month!

To round out the unit, we will now focus on ACTION! We talked about the United Nations’ Global Goals, and how every person can be part of helping with these goals. See this video provided by the UN’s World’s Largest Lesson Initiative. We read several stories of children from around the world who have created change. This weekend, look for an example of change and share it with us here on the blog or on Tuesday in class.

For GYM today, we focused on the unit and combined math, science, and physical activity! Students learned how to determine force, that force is measured in Newtons, the meaning of acceleration, and how to measure work/power. We went outside and raced up the stairs on the intermediate playground to figure out how many watts of power each of us can produce! On Tuesday, we will finish our math calculations. If you want to learn more, please see Math is Fun: Force and Math is Fun: Energy and Work. If you like the problems we did in class for extra challenge, more of them are located at the bottom of each web page. Some other challenge programs are located at the Physics Classroom: Power.

For Science today, we talked about Solar Energy and making a Solar Cooker! I have boxes everyone can use to make a mini cooker, and all we need is more aluminum foil and styrofoam, if you can look at home for any extra you have. We watched Bill Nye How Stuff Works: Solar Energy and discussed how sunlight rays reflect (angle in = angle out) on a flat surface and a parabola. We talked about how solar cookers rely on a focus point based on the angle the rays reflect. Check out Math is Fun: Reflection and Math is Fun: Refraction for more interesting physics and math on this if you want to take it further! Here is the video on making a solar cooker we watched in class, too.

We ended the day with Balloon Car Racing! Congratulations to those who had successful cars! Kudos to those whose cars were aesthetic, as well! Everyone had some time for free choice afterwards, and some students continued experimenting with Stop Motion. Overall, it was a good Friday!

Hope you have a restful weekend and a great turkey day!

Ms. D