October 7, 2022: VEX Club, Design Challenges, Robotics and Programming

Frisco Families,

Click Frisco Elementary STEM Blog to hear about what we have been doing in STEM this week!

Please complete the survey about STEM Communication and your child’s interest in STEM. Thank you so much for those of you who already have! You are helping me with my program goals.

VEX club will be held during the day starting on October 11. Interested 5th graders will build robots and compete with two other elementary schools in our district. For more information about this year’s VEX challenge, check out this website. Students have already signed up, and I can’t wait to get started with them. 

Check out the pictures below to see your children doing some pretty amazing design challenges and work with robots:)

Thank you!

Jen Mortensen

 

Photographs

Kindergarten

1st Grade - Students are learning to program their Ozobots. Ozobots have light sensors that detect color and patterns in color. If you give the Ozobot the right code using a marker line, they will go fast, slow down, turn right or left, spin around, do a u turn, etc. First graders drew communities with services in their classrooms, and we programmed our Ozobots to travel the towns.

2nd Grade - Students thought about the materials that work best to create a backscratcher. This is their first maker space project! We have some of our back scratchers in the trophy case at school. One is made out of programmable Legos, and is entirely automatic. It works!

See also the 2nd Grade Cubelets programming. Students kept a positive attitude and kept trying even when their structures didn't light up or drive--always important.

3rd Grade - More on their fabulous meal planning next week! They empathized to find out their partner's perfect meal, defined their challenge, ideated - brainstormed lots of ideas, prototyped with their meal creation, and Monday they will test by sharing their meal with their partner to get feedback.

Third grade also interviewed a police officer, wildlife rescue, firefighter, and water issues in order to find out what problems they saw in the community. Then, using the design thinking process, students invented things or processes to help solve the challenge. Ask your student about their solution!

4th Grade - Check out SeeSaw for their classroom digital citizenship work. Check out their Snazzy Sneaker design challenge builds, too (pics next week).

5th Grade - Check out SeeSaw for their completed biospheres next week! Ask them about producers, consumers, and decomposers. These are also on display in our library!

Little Bits - Anya took video for us (her idea), so you can see how 5th graders have been creating things with Little Bits electronics. Next week, we will have a design challenge that uses these tools.

Materials donations:

• Light cardboard (cereal boxes, etc)
• Cardboard boxes
• Toilet paper tubes
• Duct tape
• Masking tape
• Straws
• Cotton balls

Estimadas Familias de Frisco,

Por favor vean el siguiente video de 5 minutos acerca de nuestros planes para esta semana.  No olviden hacer click abajo para ver fotos de nuestra clase.

El video trata de los siguientes puntos:

• Completen la encuesta STEM 2022 dirigida a las Familias.
• STEM está basado en un proceso de diseño del pensamiento. - IDEO - ¿Qué es un pensamiento diseñado?
• Con frecuencia los proyectos STEM de diseño del pensamiento coinciden con el contenido de una materia de ciencias (por ejemplo Ciencias Sociales).
• Nuestro enfoque se basa en las habilidades de colaboración.  Habilidades de colaboración - Grados 3-5
• Este año tenemos programados tres eventos familiares. Pronto les informaremos las fechas de los mismos. 
• Ingrese a la cuenta SeeSaw de su estudiante para ver su trabajo realizado en STEM y en otras asignaturas (Classrooms).