Let them explore!

On Thursday, January 9th 4th grade students participated in an amazing enrichment opportunity provided by the generosity of TESPTO called Playful Engineers Traveling Maker Space. In this two hour workshop led by Jay Mankita students first watched demonstrations of how common materials (e.g. blocks, legos, balls, wooden rods, K-nex) could be transformed into simple machines and chain reaction machines in a Rube Goldberg style.  Next, students were able to explore the materials to create their own chain reaction machines.  Students imagined, created, problem solved, and collaborated.  And they failed many times.  But in this workshop students experienced the joys of practice leading to progress and failure leading to success.  

Thank you TESPTO for this wonderful exploration opportunity!

The Power of Yet

Poetry Power

By Student Bloggers: Ayden, Emmitt, Natalia, Maddy, Myles

Have you ever heard of the Power of Yet? In this classroom we got tagged in this game called Poetry Tag. And it is a game going around our school. We memorized a poem called The Power of Yet. This is us making tee-shirts for the game. 

We decided to tag Mrs. Obuchowski’s class after  voting. Mrs. Gibbas found out that we could tag two classes so we decided to tag team Highmax. We were all so happy to try on our awesome  new tee-shirts. They looked amazing! We tagged the two classes by looking at their schedule and found the perfect time to strike.

The Power of Yet is something we are trying to remember in our classroom. Just because you cannot do something yet does not mean you can’t ever do it.

Would you be able to break out?

Growth Mindset Breakout EDU

By Student Blogger Braden

Have you tried breakout EDU? You might want to! Growth Mindset Breakout EDU is a puzzle where you are supposed to find clues and work as a team to unlock boxes. You have one hour to do this task. There is a smaller box with one lock on it and a big box with three locks so you have to unlock four locks in total.  Of course there are breakouts on other topics but last week we did this one.

Inside the final box there was a paper that said, “We broke out,” or “We escaped.” Both of our teams escaped before one hour was up!

The good thing about breakouts is they keep your brain running. You should try a breakout EDU to test your skills!