Women's History Month in the Media Center

        What an exciting month it has been in our media center. We are celebrating Women's History Month by researching and reading about famous women.  Every grade level has participated in creating some type of artifact or project for our Women's History Museum.

Kindergarten and 2nd graders have listened to stories about famous women and then built a scene from the book using Legos. Kindergartners then recorded themselves telling about the project while 2nd graders wrote about why the built their design.

 

First grade students listened to stories about famous women and then filled their silhouettes up with character trait words. (See pictures above.)

3rd graders created a Google Slide presentation or a riddle about their famous women.

          

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4th graders talked about how sometimes when you tour a museum you don’t learn from just looking; you have to interact with it. They created “Scavenger Hunt” type questions using Google Forms, in order for you to be interactive with our museum. Here are two examples. 

http://goo.gl/forms/DQP8drMLQn

http://goo.gl/forms/rdHmnYgqgg

5th graders researched a famous woman and then created an artifact for the museum about that woman. 

 

The students have learned a lot through this process and really love seeing their work on display.  

STEM meets Dr. Seuss

 While I have some of these on my last post the students did such a great job I needed to create a new post just to share them all.

 Fourth graders took part in a STEM challenge after I read Ten Apples on Top. I gave each group a bag of building supplies (sugar cubes, Popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, and straws) to build something that will hold at least one apple.  The first day all I gave them was the items in the bag. Here are some of the structures that they created.
 

                                 

Day 2 - Day 4 I changed the plans a little and they could ask for one more item to use to build their structure. Here are some of the results. 

The groups with Popsicle sticks asked for tape. For this groups I told them that they had to think outside the box and couldn't just use the sticks to build a house like base. The moans soon turned to excitement as they worked on each design. 

    

The groups with straws asked for tape also. The students were engaged and focused as they collaborated on how to build each structure.

All groups with pipe cleaners asked for tape, except one. They asked for note cards. While not all of the designs worked, the critical thinking and collaboration that went into each design was great.

 

With the sugar cubes the students were asked to be creative in designing the structure.

  

Quotes about this lesson:

 "Let's do this more often." - 4th grade girl

"This was the best media class ever!" - 4th grade boy

"Thank you for getting them to think critically and problem solve!" - 4th grade teacher