Hour of Code

Yesterday, the class started working on activities related to the 'Hour Of Code' challenge, where students learn the basic concepts of Computer Science by writing lines of programming code (you can find out more at http://code.org/). The students were working in groups, where one student was the 'robot', and the other students in the group had to write code to command the 'robot' to stack cups in a certain pattern. This would help to get them ready for today's activity, which you can read about after these first pictures, which show the 'robot' activity...

In today's activity, the students actually 'wrote' code on the computer, to help program an Angry Birds game. It was so neat to see the students figuring out how to program the game to make it do what they needed to, in order to complete all the tasks... and to see how excited they were to successfully complete all the tasks. Here are some photos of them working on this activity...

Christmas concert tomorrow!

Over the past few weeks, the students have been working really hard on their poems and songs for the Radisson Christmas concert. The whole school had its dress rehearsal today, and the students sounded great! If you're interested in coming to see it, the big shows are tomorrow in the afternoon (1:30 pm) and in the evening (6:30 pm). We hope to see you there!

Battery recycling drive - planning

As part of talking about Habitats and Plants in Science, we've been discussing the effects that pollutants can have on the environment. One of the issues that we touched on is the different heavy metals (such as mercury) that can leak out of batteries when they are disposed of in the landfill. We've been a drop-off site for battery recycling (through Call2Recycle) for the past few years (so far, Radisson School staff/families have recycled approx. 150 lbs. of batteries!), but the class has begun planning a battery drive. We want to collect as many used batteries from families as Radisson as we can, in order to have them recycled, and diverted from the landfill. The class has divided themselves up into 3 groups: students who will write and make announcements on the PA system in the morning, students who will write and make presentations to individual classrooms, and students who will design and put up posters around the school to publicize our campaign. The groups started planning today - here are some shots of them in action:

Criteria the class came up with for the different jobs.

Sketching out a poster.

Writing a script for the morning announcements.

Writing a script to present the information about the campaign to individual classrooms.

The awesomeness that happens when Math and Art collide!

I love it when Math and Art collide. I'm the kind of person who loves order and organization (although, if you've seen my desk at times, you might question me on that!), and I find that while often some amazing pieces come out of chaotic, frenetic energy, order and organization can combine to create some really beautiful works of art. We were talking about different shapes and symmetry in Math, and after seeing Ms. Clarke's class create some beautiful images using pattern blocks, I challenged my students to create their own. My criteria were that (a) they had to start with a hexagon in the middle, and (b) they had to be symmetrical. As for the results... wow! I've found myself staring at some of these, and being 'pulled in' to the images. I will be posting them on Artsonia soon - until then, enjoy these collages of their work...