5/6 Grade

Creative Arts

D-Lab is one of Trinity's 5th and 6th-grade Creative Arts quarterly classes, in rotation with Visual Arts, Theater, and Music. The curriculum delves into the mindsets of computational thinking, innovation, and visual storytelling, 2-3 units are covered in an 8-9 week period. These are sample units:

Coding for Interactivity: Principles of Conductivity

Combine Makey Makey's Microcontroller and Tynker's Event-Based Media Programming to create an interactive 3D model that brings screen elements to life.
Coding concepts: sprites, events, X/Y coordinates, (see lesson plan)

Story Cubes: 3D Cubes come to life in your hands and on screen.

Code a perfect cube in Tinkercad using CodeBlocks drag-n-drop tools. Then sculpt additional 3D reliefs on each face to create a scene that tells a story. Create an identical version to hold in your hands, using recycled materials and then wire touch points on the faces up with conductive materials that trigger an onscreen interactive Tynker version of your cube, through the conductive powers of the Makey Makey microcontroller.
(see Lesson Plan)

Coding for Interactivity:
Sensors and Actuators

MicroBit microcontrollers are coded to be the brains of "Smart Toys," responding to sensor input with LED patterns, playing of tones, and powering of motors. Toys are prototyped with physical recycled materials and in the 3D world of Tinkercad.
Coding concepts: variables, conditionals.
(See lesson plan)

3D Modeling Techniques

Model 3D objects with additive and subtractive geometric shapes in Tinkercad. Achieve further precision with its Codeblocks tools. Common projects:

  • create a simple machine

  • create a transportation vessel

Power Transmissions with
Gears, Axles, and Connectors

Create a gear train that transfers energy from one place to another, along the lines of this power transmission chain (credit: Dannie Struhbar, FLL Workshop.com) See lesson plan.

Design Thinking: Industrial Design and Visual Communication

Designing furniture solutions for unique users using paper-folding methods. Creating expository visual presentations with a combination of tools (Keynote, iMovie, and Canva) that portray clear detail to the viewers. (See lesson plan)

Stop-motion Animation & Greenscreen Compositing

Bring inanimate objects to life through the persistence of vision, camera placement, and editing. Identify pictorial qualities in a design such as shape and form, space and depth, or pattern and texture to create visual unity and desired effects in designs. Students capture images using onion skinning in iMotion and then edit on a timeline in iMovie in tandem with GarageBand to create expressive shorts. Greenscreen technology allows creators to composite multiple layers of video to suggest new worlds altogether.

Simple Machines & Chain Reactions: Tiny Rube Goldberg Contraptions

Combine creative imagination with predictive engineering sensibilities to draw and then fabricate a "Tiny Rube Goldberg Machine." Using household objects like string, bobbins, corks, pipe cleaners, etc., students engineer a series of interconnected simple machines to successfully transfer a single force of energy from one end of their inefficient machine to another, to perform a simple task like turning on a lightbulb or watering a plant.