This week in STEM, the 3/4 class explored their Driving Question: How can we, as architects, design and build a medieval village? They brainstormed what they need to know to answer this question: How were medieval villages built? What were the buildings and elements in a medieval village? How do architects choose and use materials?… Read more Exploring architectural features!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class took on some architectural design challenges to kickoff our new joint STEM/Global Studies project on architecture in the middle ages! In this project, the 3/4 class will be designing and building a medieval village- more details to come! To kick off the project, they took on two building… Read more Kicking off our new architecture project!
This week in STEM, the 3/4s finished their portfolio reflections and took on a design challenge. The design challenge was to build a doghouse that could protect a puppy from the heat and light energy of the sun. This design challenge tied in elements of their last project (how light works and travels, reflection) with… Read more Design Challenge: Light Mixed with Architecture!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class finished their sections for the book, which they chose to call “The Magical World of Light, Color and Photography”. The book includes the sections that each group wrote, such as “what is light?” and “How is color related to light?” The book also includes photos that each group… Read more Finishing Project 2 and Taking on a Design Challenge!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class focused on photography. We took a field trip to RL Photo Studio to learn about photography from professional photographer and VDS parent, Rick Levinson. Rick taught the students about how changing the aperture and the shutter speed on a camera affects the resulting photo. The students were able… Read more Visiting RL Photo Studio
This week in STEM, the 3/4s practiced research and paraphrasing skills as they started gathering information to put into the class book about the physics of light and color. Each group chose a topic related to light, color, and photography, and will be writing paragraphs and taking pictures to teach about that topic. The 3/4s… Read more Researching and Paraphrasing: Working on our book on light and color!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class continued addressing their “Need to Knows” for the project’s driving question: How can we use photography to teach about the physics of light and color? This week we focused on photography and how cameras work. We started the week looking at the history of cameras, comparing and contrasting… Read more Photography: Light, composition, and camera obscuras!
This week in STEM we continued our explorations into light and color, and continued to practice designing and carrying out controlled experiments. We started by investigating how light travels in a straight line. In order to do this, the students designed an experiment, changing only one variable, to see how light traveled. Some groups chose… Read more How is light related to color?
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class were introduced to their new Driving Question: How can we use photography to teach about the physics of color and light? In this project, they will learn about photography and how cameras work, and also learn about some of the properties of color and light. At the end… Read more The Physics of Color and Light
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class explored how light works, and started learning about the scientific method and how to set up a controlled experiment. Their next project is about waves (light and sound) and how they are used in technology. The 3/4 class will be finding out their Driving Question next week, but… Read more Exploring how light works!