This week in STEM, the 3/4 class finished their inventions that demonstrated energy transformations, and created posters to show the different types of energy involved in the process. To celebrate the end of their project, we went outside on a lovely spring day to have some fun with rollercoasters and take on some design challenges!… Read more Fun with Rollercoasters!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class explored renewable and nonrenewable energy sources, looking at the pros and cons of each, and investigating the energy transformations that involved in the process by which these sources produce electricity (ex. wind energy transformed to kinetic energy of the turbine blades turning and generator spinning, which leads to… Read more Can you invent something to demonstrate energy transformations?
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class explored some topics related to their driving question: How can we create an invention that demonstrates energy transformations? This week, they focused on how energy is transferred from one object to another through collisions. They first designed a controlled experiment to see how the height of a ramp… Read more How is energy transferred when objects collide?
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class kept working on their boats. The goal of the boat design challenge was to see how potential energy is transformed into kinetic energy, and explore ways that we can measure both PE and KE. The students finished building their boats, and then went down to the McCabes Brook… Read more Testing out our boats!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class explored the topic for their fourth and final STEM project, energy and energy transformations! They started out with a card sort showing examples of six types of energy: mechanical, sound, light, wind, heat, and electrical. After sorting the cards into those six categories, they next investigated how one… Read more Exploring Energy
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class was busy preparing for our joint Global Studies/ STEM project on medieval life. In STEM, they were finishing up their medieval houses, thinking about what the interior of the houses looked like, as well as making final touches on the architectural features of the exterior. The 3/4s did… Read more Welcome to our Medieval Village!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class got a visit from a special expert on medieval times! He shared with the students tons of information about the Middle Ages, in terms of the society, the goods and services they had, and of course, the buildings! He met with each group to see the progress on… Read more Building the Medieval Village!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class finished their designs/blueprints for their medieval buildings. Groups of 2 or 3 were assigned a character from medieval society in Global Studies, and then used their character to brainstorm where they lived in the medieval village, what their buildings/houses were made of, who built them, and what architectural… Read more The Medieval Architects Start to Build!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 continued learning about the steps that architects follow. Last week they built structures and learned how to draw floor plans with a scale. This week, they started with floor plans and a scale, and had to figure out how to build a house with three rooms of the correct… Read more The steps that architects follow: using floor plans to build!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class continued learning about Medieval Architecture. They learned about common medieval architectural features, and then had to fill out a “job application” to be a medieval architect, including a drawing of a castle they would propose to build that included these features. When they got their job applications back,… Read more What steps do architects follow?