The End of a Quarter...

What???? The first quarter is almost over???  I have been hearing lots of exclamations such as that today, and I have been preparing the students for the last day of our Quarter tomorrow.  We have had a great time exploring technology together, and I am sad to see it end.  

We started out practicing our presentation skills using Google Slides.  We learned about how to do research, and share ideas about a technology that we chose.  The "My Favorite Technology" project showed off our skills, and also shared some fun facts about who we are as people!  It was a great way to get to know each other. 

We then worked on becoming Safe, Responsible and Respectful online citizens with our Digital Citizenship unit.  We used Padlet to create a gallery of interesting facts about being safe online, and reflections on how we think technology has changed our lives.  We also created our own fun comic strip using Make Believe Comics.  Check it out sometime-it is a super fun way to show what we learned!  

After learning so much about being safe online, we launched right into building our Robots! It has been a blast watching the students work to complete the chassis of their robot, and exploring how to engineer an extension for it.    The students were challenged to use the Engineering Design Process to complete an arm for their robot that would move cups into a collection area on our robotics track.  We learned about the Criteria and Constraints, and we put our robots through 3 trials to test out our extensions.  Part of the challenge of the robots is driving, so we did plenty of driving practice too!

To finish off our quarter, I have been introducing the students to Tynker.  Tynker is an online coding program that has games, lessons and seasonal projects that are fun to do as a family!  The link to Tynker is included here, but your student also has access to the Tynker classes I created through their Google Classroom class.  Let me know if you need more suggestions for coding practice and fun-I have lots of ideas!

Finally, throughout the quarter we have been practicing those important fundamental skills such as typing, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and coding.  Your student can continue their hard work in Typing Club, Code.org, Quizlet and Newsela.  If they are looking for something to do, they can always start there!

Please let me know if you have any questions and I hope to see all of your students join me at Robotics club after school.