Changes in the Earth's Surface: Presentation Day

Project Creation Phase: Changes in the Earth's Surface

Students are in complete project creation mode!  We have commercials being filmed and edited, experiments created, coding for interactive games in Tynker, music and lyric creations in GarageBand, 3D models of a prototype in Tinkercad and product design to help save people from lava during a volcanic eruption, and video conferences with a biologist from UGA on beach reclamation and a Yellowstone National Park ranger/scientist about the super volcano and its possible effects on our country.

As always, I am impressed with the level of learning and stretching of their abilities and knowledge!

Forming Groups Through Resumes and Bidding Process

Students were chosen as group leaders by their peers.  The six highest scoring students on their peer evaluations from our last project became new leaders.  They had a tough job as we explored a new technique for choosing team members.  Every student wrote their own resume detailing their strengths and work experience with collaboration and technology.  They shared their Google Doc with me and I removed their names and assigned them each a secret number.  Team leaders met with  me during lunch to bid on their team.  They were given $200,000 to spend on their team's salaries.  

I was impressed with the students' ability to create well rounded groups and look for essential qualities in team members.  Groups were announced later that afternoon and students reflected on what a large responsibility is was to choose their members anonymously!

Students met after groups were announced to share their Learn/Wonder charts and begin drafting their driving question for research week!

Project Based Learning Spilling into Book Clubs!

One group is reading The Boy on the Wood Box and were fascinated with the main character Leon Leyson who wrote this book about his life.  After their book club meeting with written conversation and sharing their sticky notes with text evidence, they wanted to know more. The grabbed their devices and laptops and began researching about his life and family.  The uncovered he died last year and were disappointed as they wanted to make contact with him.  However, they found out about his wife and how many books she purchased when they were published by doing some math to figure out how the money she spent converted into number of books purchased.  This group was completely self led and had to be forced to take a break from their uncovering to go to lunch!  This a great example of the benefits of project based learning in order to promote lifelong learners!

Presentation Day: Genetics

Wow!  We have come a long way from our last project and have grown tremendously!  

Students created videos, songs, websites, digital brochures, interviews with experts in the field, Minecraft models, 3D models of cells and more!  

Enjoy a snapshot piece of every group and their project!

To see more, visit the "Presentation" tab on the InTECC website. 

 More will be uploaded soon!

Field Trip To Lanier and Another Interview 10-17-14

We had quite a busy day Friday with our field trip to Lanier High to work with CDAT students and see what projects they are working hard on; they are sharing their pitch with real investors!

We saw several programs they use that we want to use here at White Oak!

Students were excited to see the technology in use at the high school level.

Also, a project group in Mrs. Winzeler's class interviewed Mrs. Dinah Smith, who is legally blind, for their InTECC project on genetics.  They are looking at how blindness occurs and how it affects the person.  She brought several tools to show students how she navigates through the world built for sighted people.  Some exciting learning all for one day!

Video Conference with Dr. Saey in Washington, D.C.

Project creation phase is where the research gets interesting!  Students in this group are researching Ebola and its affect on cells in our body.  They were able to contact Dr. Saey in Washington, D.C. who was a researcher, now reporter for Science News who works in the field of biology and medicine.  We learned so much from their video conference!

Testing Out BYOD During Project Time

This week was the first opportunity students had to bring their own device to school.  We worked on our project proposals and began work on our project creations.  Students were excited to have these new tools to use!

Research Phase: Genetics

Students in Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Winzeler's class are working hard to finalize their research today.  Tuesday will be the first day of planning out their project and starting to create with their groups.  Students participated in technology sessions for GarageBand and iMovie on the iMac.  

Their ideas are really developing!

Our first InTECC project: Classification of Plants and Animals

Catch an overview of our first project!

Fifth Grade Programming Mentors

Look at our beautiful programmers! Today students worked diligently on their projects and had a wonderful opportunity to work with our Kindergarten book buddy class.  We collaborated with students to teach and play Robot Turtles, which is a programming game for beginners.  They are looking forward to adding in new challenges like lasers and function cards the next time we meet!

Research Phase

Students this past week have been working on research related to their driving question.  They are organizing their thoughts on a group project outline and using research skills learned from Ms. Garrison and taking notes using fact/question/response, learn/wonder, and topic/detail/response charts from reading workshop.  This week we will begin the project creation phase.  I am looking forward to seeing how they decide to show what they learned from their research!