Another week of station work!

It's almost the winter break holiday...and you can feel the energy in the air!  This week we are finishing up our Design Station work, including our Prezis on the Engineering Design Process.  We had a few housekeeping tasks to complete as well, including a survey about how we use technology both at school and at home for the district.  

At the end of this week, we are starting a very exciting Station on Robotics!  The students will be exploring coding by using the Circuit Playground Express, and using Microsoft Makecode to make their Circuit Playground come alive!  Along with the exploration, the students will be learning vocabulary related to robotics, such as "while loop" and "block coding," reading an article about designing robots, and continuing to practice our typing skills in Typing Club.  

Over break, if you have access to a computer at home or at the library, students can keep up with their techie skills by working in a few suggested websites!  

1. www.code.org  The students have all been working on coding already, and can see their progress by logging in with their Google account. 
2. Typing Club  Here you can access the Typing Practice lessons that your student uses.  
3.Scratch Coding Games  Coding is super fun when working in Scratch! This website allows you to create your own project or game.  

You don't have to be alone when you use technology.  If you have a device at home, work with your students to explore coding!  We have been learning so many new things, and it is great to give your student the opportunity to share with their family and friends. 

Our new unit of Station Work!

Last week we finished our first cycle of Station Work. What is Station Work, you might ask?  Well, for our stations, we are exploring different subject areas in 15 minute increment.  Last week, we worked on the station for Art and Music.  At the Fundamental Skills station, we worked on vocabulary related to coding in Quizlet, and recorded our highest score in the "Match" game, took a 3 minute typing test to see how we far we are towards our typing SMART goals, and read a Readworks article related to music.  At the Coding Station, we worked on our coding skills using www.code.org.   The final station was an exploration station, and we explored different ways that you can use technology to create art and music.  Two of the favorite websites from last week were Chrome Music Lab and www.bomomo.com.

This week, we are continuing to work in stations, but we are focusing on the Engineering Design Process.  We again are exploring vocabulary, typing and reading comprehension at our Fundamental Skills station and working on coding in www.code.org to continue improving our coding skills.  At our Exploration Station, however, we are working on using our research skills to learn about the 6 steps of the Engineering Design Process and showing what we learn by creating a Prezi.  Have your student share their finished Prezi with you!  You will be impressed.  

Next week we will be exploring Robotics, a station that should be a lot of fun for our last week before break.  I will hopefully get some great pictures of the students working with their robots that I can share!