Arianna Lambert STEM, The Global Competencies

The Global Competencies Through STEM

As I was starting this post, I started cracking up. “On the Road Again” came to mind so I had to stop and figure out whose song it was. I don’t think that I have ever heard the entire song by Willie Nelson but the words immediately came to mind. I’m at a new school and in a new role once again! I’m continuing the work that I’ve done in the past as a STEM teacher but Library has also been added to my timetable which is a new experience for me. I’m excited for the opportunity to partner with junior teachers at my school to support students in STEM learning. 

For many of my classes, I started off with an introduction to STEM and an explanation of the TDSB’s Global Competencies, particularly since they are prominently displayed in our Library Learning Commons. For those who may not be familiar, the Global Competencies are a set of attitudes, skills and knowledge that we support students in developing over time that allow students to be able to navigate the world effectively. Through the development of these skills, we hope that they support students in contributing positively to society. 

These are sometimes big themes for little people to conceptualize in a concrete way so we’ve been working on challenges and explicitly talking about how we might use and work on improving on these skills as we work. And the skills aren’t happening in isolation. As part of our cup stacking challenge, students were reminded of the importance of problem-solving in their groups. For some of the challenges, they quickly realized that they had to flip their cups and that it would require them to effectively communicate with one another. In some instances, groups chose to take turns selecting a person who would be the leader, making sure that there was one person who was directing their collaboration. Some groups got creative in how they maneuvered the cup flips or taller stacks. Along the way, we continued to reinforce the fact that these were the skills that we were working on.

At the end of our challenges, we’ve been asking groups to reflect on the skill that they thought they did the best in and the skill that they feel the need to work on during our next challenge. The students have been so reflective! They are learning that part of effective communication is not only in the way they speak to one another but how we also listen. They are learning that being a leader doesn’t mean doing everything but also knowing how to communicate with your team in order to ensure that everyone is doing their part. As they work to problem solve, they’re learning that there isn’t just one way that works but that we can solve problems in a variety of ways. We’re failing and learning that the process and how we worked on these skills is more important than what the finished product may look like.

Arianna Lambert Math, STEM

What’s the Probability?

This month we’ve been learning about probability. We started off by watching videos and learning about probability language. From there, older students connected probability language, representing the likelihood of events on a probability line. We’re running a series of probability experiments and spiralling back to some of the work that students already did in Data Management with graphing and analyzing the data. All-in-all, it’s been a busy and exciting month learning about probability from kindergarten to grade 5!

Kindergarten

In kindergarten, it’s been all about probability language and explaining our answers. The students are learning that there isn’t always just one right answer but that we can have different answers that can still be correct. One example was the probability of having dessert after dinner. When asked, some students said certain because they always have dessert. Others said that it was unlikely because they rarely have dessert, while still, others said it was impossible because they can’t have sugar in the evening. We learned that our justification was just as important as our answer. One activity that we did was in Jamboard where students sorted items based on their probability of either seeing them or eating them. 

Primary Classes

Give primary students a quarter and the excitement in the room is palpable. After trying their hand at the Jamboard to learn more about probability language, students started to get into doing some experiments and talking about events that are equally likely. Tasked with tossing a coin 20 times, students had to colour in a chart that served as the graph of their data. We also spoke about sample size and I collected the data from multiple classes to show the difference between the results from one group, one class, and then the entire sample who tossed the coin. We’re going to be designing spinners next and using our probability language to make predictions and then analyze our results. 

Junior Classes

Who knew that rolling a number cube could be so exciting? I did run out of number cubes so we’ve also been using Mathigon Polypad and the excitement is similar. We’ve done 2 experiments so far with our number cubes. The first was to see the results of 30 tosses with one number cube. The second was to investigate what happens when we roll 2 number cubes, 35 times. We were interested in finding the probability of the sum of each roll. We started out by making predictions and after about 10 rolls, some students were already wanting to change their predictions. This led to conversations about which sums would be more likely than others. After graphing their results, we collected the data from different groups and have been analyzing it. 

Up next

Now that students have an understanding of probability, they will be tasked with creating their own games that involve probability. There are a number of online templates available that I can share with students or they can choose to design their own games using found materials in the classroom. For some of our activities, we have been using Alice Keeler’s blank dice roll template. May will be a month of creating and hopefully we’ll have some new and exciting games to try.

 

Arianna Lambert Kindergarten, Literacy, Math, self reflection, STEM

Spring Has Sprung!

After what has felt like a long, cold winter, I think it’s safe to say that spring has sprung. Well, at least in our classroom! The kindergarten students have been hard at work learning about plants and what they need to grow. We’ve even started growing our own grass heads. We’re pretty excited about it!

During the first week back after the break, we were talking all about spring and we were also building. Students used Lego to build something that reminded them of the season. Many students built gardens that were full of interesting flowers and animals. They were quite beautiful and this sparked some of our conversations about all the changes that we expect to see over the next few weeks.

After seeing all of the beautiful Lego gardens and I must admit that I have quite a love for plants, we thought it might be great to try our hand at a little gardening. Using some eye, nose and mouth stickers, students were tasked with creating a face for their grass head. Once they added the faces, cups were filled with soil and they began drawing and writing in their journals about what their grass heads would need to grow. Now, I think that I mentioned before that I’m relatively new to kindergarten so it was definitely interesting to see students trying to copy off the whiteboard. EEK! I can’t say enough how grateful I am to work with and learn from two amazing ECEs! Of course, they were there to the rescue and showed me that some students required more support and that tracing might be a way to get them to practice forming their letters. I tucked this one away for our next class together.

Time truly flies when you are having fun. During our first class, we were able to prepare our cups but the fun came during our second class when we had the chance to mix our soil and grass seeds and add water. Let me tell you how excited the students were. Little fingers got mixing seeds in soil as students were reminded that we needed soil, water, sun and seeds to make their grass heads grow. During this class, we also wrote the first entry in our observation journal and this time, we were able to do some tracing. Students also had the opportunity to draw a picture of what they observed. I asked students to make predictions on how long it would take to see the grass grow and we got answers anywhere from the next day to two weeks. This was on a Friday and imagine my surprise on a Monday morning when I started to see some little green bits popping out of some of the soil.

 

We haven’t yet had a class together this week but I’ve had a few visitors come up to water and I’ve taken down some of our grass heads for students to see their growth. They are amazed that they started growing so soon and that some already have a lot of “hair”. Yesterday, one student noticed that in some cups, the grass is growing really long roots. On Friday when we meet again, we’ll start to measure our grass and we’ll continue to record our observations. I wonder at what point our grass heads will need a trim!

 

Arianna Lambert Climate Change, Coding, Global Warming, Inspiring Students, Literacy, STEM, Technology

Scratching the Pollution in Our Oceans

Last year I blogged about a new book – The Global Ocean. This past month we were lucky to have a virtual visit with the author, Rochelle Strauss. Rochelle gave students context on the importance of her book and read passages in order to support students in understanding the need for immediate actions for change. Students had the opportunity to ask questions and learn more about how the actions of each of us can have a significant impact on the environment, and ultimately our world.  There we a number of students who had questions and based on our visit, one student said that he was inspired to think about his passions and how he might use writing to share that with the world. It was a great visit and our learning didn’t stop there.

During our visit, students learned more about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and were eager to find out how that much garbage got into the oceans in the first place. Students researched about causes and also learned about the work being done to clean up the oceans. During our visit, we learned about the Turtle Extruder and one student was particularly interested in how people who fish might use different kinds of nets so as to be more responsible when fishing. 

This term, students are furthering their knowledge of coding and are specifically learning to use Scratch. As part of our action to raise greater awareness, students were tasked with creating a story, PSA, or game in Scratch that they could share with others about what they learned. Some students were excited to remix an existing catch game, changing the sprites and adding additional text to share their learning. Other students were excited to use the program to create stories to inspire others to learn in an interactive way.  Projects were due last week and yet there are still some students who are eagerly wanting to add more information to their projects, so their work is ongoing. 

This entire experience reminded me of the importance of purposeful uses of technology. While we could have spent time learning about the different blocks in Scratch, I think this activity allowed students to learn how to use blocks in an authentic way. If they wanted their sprite to do something specifically, they learned about how they might use specific blocks to achieve the task.  Students learned how to effectively use the blocks in their code because they had a purpose for learning how to use them. They were also able to share how they used the code to perform different tasks with others, allowing them to be “the experts” in the room. 

Last year I found a great picture book that spoke to the urgency of protecting our oceans. Little did I know that a year later, students would have the opportunity to hear from the author, get inspired, and then share their learning with others in a creative way. What a great journey!

Arianna Lambert Math, STEM, Use of Technology

The Shape of Things

We’re having fun with shapes! In kindergarten, grade 1 and grade 2, we have been exploring, sorting, and comparing 2-D shapes using a variety of tools.  Here’s what we’ve been up to for the last couple of weeks.

In some classes, we started off on a shape scavenger hunt to see which shapes we could identify in our learning space. Students were excited to identify different shapes in the room and magazines. Many were impressed by how many items they could find that were shapes that they knew the names of. The face of our clock is a circle. The lego bins in our class have faces made out of rectangles. The books on our shelves and our SmartBoard also have rectangular faces. We identified a lot of rectangles in our space. 

After identifying shapes that we could easily name or identify, we started talking about composite shapes. The tangram is a Chinese puzzle made from a square cut into seven pieces: two large triangles, one medium-sized triangle, two small triangles, one square, and one parallelogram. After discussing the properties of these shapes and congruence, the students were really amazed by how these 7 shapes could be put together to make a square. Many tried to flip and turn the shapes to return them to the original square and realized that it was a little tricky. After having some time to play with the tangram, students had the chance to try and see what they could create other than a square. They were then introduced to tangram puzzles and their minds were blown. After having the chance to physically manipulate the shapes, we took our skills online. Exploring Mathigon’s Tangram Builder, students had the chance to see how they could piece together the shapes to compose pictures and designs using these 2-D shapes. 

We have also been exploring what we can make using geoboards. Using the Math Learning Center’s Geoboards, students were given a few challenges and rose to the occasion. Here are just a few of the challenges we explored:

  •  Using your geoboard, make a shape that satisfies a rule (i.e., four sides; all equal sides; greater than 4 sides). What’s the name of your shape?
  • Using the geoboard make the letters in your name. What shapes did you use?
  • Create a picture using 3 different shapes. Describe your picture and the shapes you used. 
  • Make triangles of different sizes. Describe the differences between your triangles. 

We’re having a blast exploring shapes. This has also been a great reminder for me as to the importance of having manipulatives that students can move around and use as well as incorporating technology. We’ve explored with both and while some have really enjoyed using the online tools, there have been some who automatically gravitate to the physical tools in our space. Either way, we’re learning and having fun in the process.

Arianna Lambert 21st Century Learning, Coding, Kindergarten, Math, STEM, Technology, The Global Competencies

Computer Science Education Week

The beginning of December marked Computer Science Education Week. It was our chance to continue deepening our Computational Thinking skills with unplugged and online activities. The kindergarten students were learning to communicate an understanding of basic spatial relationships while students in grades 1 to 5 were learning to solve problems and create computational representations of mathematical situations using coding concepts and skills. 

Throughout the year, kindergarten students have been learning to communicate basic spatial relationships – on top, beside, to the left of, to the right of, ahead, etc.  They’re picking it up quickly and that helped us when we started working on our Lego Mazes. Students started by building their mazes on Lego Baseplates and then used the arrows to help move their minifigures from the start to the end of the maze. Some groups realized that there were different ways to make their way through. Having this practice proved helpful when they had the opportunity to try a couple of online activities – Code Monkey Junior and Beaver Achiever. 

The grade 1s and 2s were pretty curious about the Lego Mazes and tried their hand at using the arrows to move their way through the mazes that the kindergarten students created. It took some practice but in groups, they were able to get the job done. Next, using images on a grid, students were tasked with coding a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They had to consider the steps that are involved in creating the sandwich and then determine the sequence of events as they moved from one place to the next, gathering the materials and making their sandwich. This practice was also helpful for them for their online activities – Code Monkey Junior and Beaver Achiever. 

The grades 3, 4, and 5 students were all about solving problems in Minecraft using code.org and Minecraft for Education. Starting out in code.org gave students the opportunity to have some guided practice and when it came time to work in the Minecraft for Education space, those skills came in handy as students coded their way to escape the mysterious mansion. It was great to see students collaborating with each other and finding different ways of coding their way out of challenges. I found it particularly interesting that there were some students that were able to catch mistakes in the code of their peers even before running it. The opportunity to debug the code in Minecraft for Education was really great for some to see how changing small things could result in big changes overall. 

I’m still working on ways of helping students to explicitly understand computational skills – algorithmic thinking, abstraction, decomposition, generalizing and patterns, evaluation, and logic. While Computer Science Education Week only lasts one week in the year, we’re excited that the learning is ongoing and that the skills we are learning are transferable to other subject areas as we consider ways of solving problems.

Arianna Lambert 21st Century Learning, Celebrating Success, Constant Learning, STEM

We’re Building Again!

Lay a challenge before a creative and imaginative group of students and you get nothing but sheer enthusiasm and excitement to tackle that challenge. My school’s kindergarten and primary students, like Iggy Peck, are always up for a building challenge. After reading the book and realizing just how devastating a broken bridge could be, groups of students banded together using linking discs to solve the problem and created some incredible bridges. 

In groups of 3 or 4, students quickly got to work and realized that the task of creating a bridge that was long enough and sturdy enough, during a short period of time, would require all hands on deck. Although each group was given the same task, it was great to see that groups approached the build in different ways.  It was really nice to see groups of students working together and listening to one another about what they might choose to build. Some considered building a straight line, while others tried to create something that looked like a ladder that someone could walk across. For some members, linking the discs was hard and so they took a longer time to help with the build, all while having their teammates there to help them along. From one corner of the classroom, I heard a kinder say, “I’m doing it!” while their classmate replied, “Good job”. 

When it came time to test out their creations, some groups quickly realized that they needed all of their members to help carry their bridges over to the testing station. Along the way, many broke and members had to help each other piece their bridges back together again. At the testing area, some groups found that their bridges weren’t long enough and had to go back and add on. Other groups found that what they had built wasn’t sturdy enough, resulting in the bridges falling or sliding off of the chairs. They too went back to the drawing board and added discs for extra stability, and sometimes weight at the ends.

Part of what I love so much about my work in this role is that I have the opportunity to support students in failing forward. Many were not successful on their first try and it was refreshing to see that we’ve created a space where that’s ok and we can go back and try again. We’ve had a couple of periods each of building bridges and I don’t think they’re tired yet. I’m more excited about the bridges we are building with each other as we support one another in building our creativity.