Summer, Summer, Summer Time

While summer hasn't officially started, Summer Break has! This summer I am working with the Northview Summer Camp that is put on by our wonderful and talented After School Programs. This is the same camp I worked last summer. This time around, however, I'm doing it a little differently. A little change is good, right?

For the month of June I am teaching 4th through 6th graders in the morning! This is a big change from my 6/7 year olds. There are two other teachers helping with this task, however, and I have had a blast slipping in to this new role. Between the three teachers the students are working on Math, Reading/Writing, Science and Technology. When they come to my room we have been splitting their time between science (MWF) and technology (T & TH). It's been great to see what these students are capable of.

My afternoons are similar to last summer and will be my all day normal for the month of July. I am up in the office answering phones, getting students, and holding down the fort. According to one student I am "training to be an office worker". :)

Science

My goal is to have them work on a different science experiment each week. They've been doing them in groups which has been wonderful and challenging all at the same time. I forget that conversational skills and working with others are still things that need to be taught and practiced with older students. These have been things we have tried to incorporate into our daily activities. 

The first week the students worked on balancing the sides of a tug-of-war game. They had to figure out what changes to make, hypothesize what would happen, and then write an observation after it was tried. I don't think any of them had ever put that much thought into what they assumed was a simple game of tug-of-war!

This week they have been working with bananas! No, I didn't let them eat them (although many of them asked if they could). They have one bag where they are trying to slow down the ripening/rotting process, one bag as a control with nothing added, and another bag where they are trying to speed up the process. Last week the groups decided what to add to the bags. Amongst the added details we have: water, constant light, ice, old food, grass, leaves, sugar, salt and foil. We have one more observation to do on Monday. Look how they're doing!

Bananas Galore!

Nice and yellow :)

Technology

This summer we are working on coding! Many of our activities are done on the code.org website. This site has allowed students to be added to different classes so I can monitor what they are doing.  Students can then work at their own pace through the different activities. Accompanying the activities are videos with directions and explanations by various famous persons and technology gurus. It puts the activities in a format the students want to "play". Who wouldn't want to play a version of Angry Birds where they are in control?

We have also done some unplugged activities. These activities have taken us into the world of coding without the use of our devices. We have learned how to write code for different cup stacks. This was one of the first activities we did. Students looked at pictures of different cup stacks and then had to write a program using the provided symbols. Students then acted as robots and read the code to see if they could recreate the stacks. Now students make their own stacks and write the codes.

These are the only symbols they could use.

Our last unplugged activity involved abstracting out the differences in zombies. Once that was done they could use their zombie catalog to write their own program to recreate the zombie they pictured. This was a wonderfully scary project.

Monster parts from the Monster Catalog

Here's to whatever crazy we can get into next week!