October 2024

 Students are in the routine of school and are working in groups and partners well! That is a big part of PLTW no matter the grade level. Collaboration and communication are both 21st century skills and we work on them often in class!

Young fives build with new bristle blocks thanks to the generosity of the Bryant/Pattengill PTO!

Young fives are learning about living and non living things and we did some leaf rubbings one day. They turned out great!

Structure and function are a big part of our engineering curriculum and we learned how our skeleton has an important job!

Fun with wikki stix!

...and magnatiles!

Playdough centers tie into our kindergarten engineering unit

1st graders work together in small groups to play an "offline" coding game where they learn how to program a robotic dog! 

Many 5th grade groups are finished with building their robots and are practicing their driving skills and moving blocks with them. This prepares them for a big class competition where students work with other robots to score the most team points in a fun robotics challenge!

building the robot 

Starting the 24-25 School year!

 We have been doing a lot of building and creating since the start of the school year! Kindergarten and young five students have been working with lots of hands on materials at centers! Thank you to the PTO for funds to add some wikki stix, magnatiles, and play dough to our materials collection! Students are loving the creative play! First and second graders have been working in small groups to play an "offline" coding game in order to learn how to program computers! There is a lot of critical thinking, communication, and collaboration happening during this time. They have also started coding in Scratch, Jr.

Fifth graders are working in groups with VEX robotics kits to learn how the electronic components work.

Third graders are working in groups with VEX construction kits to build simple machines. This week they were working on wheel and axles.

Kindergarteners read The 3 Little Pigs and worked with a partner to design and build houses to keep the pigs safe!

5th graders begin building robots.