March is only 2 weeks in, but these videos were too amazing not to share! Third grade just completed a Project Lead the Way module on coding with Hopscotch with our STEM coordinator a few weeks ago. To familiarize them a little more with coding, I started a unit on Scratch with them. WOW, are they amazing?! These students have picked Scratch up and ran with it! Students love Scratch for many reasons: the vast amount of sprites or characters that they can choose from, the vast amount of backgrounds they can pick from , the huge sound library and they get to make their own games. What 3rd grader doesn't want to make their own video game? Below is a video of a game being explained and a video of it raining cats and dogs in scratch. Great job to both of these boys who created them!

After seeing how great they were at Scratch , I decided to introduce them to Makey Makey and coding Scratch to hook up with Makey Makey. Using the Bill Martin book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? students coded Scratch to correspond with the buttons on Makey Makey and with the animal sounds from the book. They used PlayDoh as the conductive source to make the circuit component of the Makey Maeky work. Check out the results below!

Third grade has been learning about animals and their habitats in science. I approached Mrs. McGinnis about collaborating on a fun habitat project that would help the kids learn a little more information on specific habitats and more skills using technology. Students were put into groups of 3 and assigned a habitat. They were assigned a four slide Google Slides presentation on their habitat and were also tasked with putting together an example of their habitat and filming it with a stop motion animator extension that they added to their chromebooks. They learned a lot from this project. They learned how to collaborate with 3 people on the same project in Google slides , they learned specific animals, plants and climate of their habitats, and they learned what stop motion animation is and how to accomplish putting together a movie using it. Their movies turned out AWESOME. Here are a few examples:

After participating in Hour of Code last month, students were eager to learn more coding skills. We took some time to learn how to code on Scratch Jr. Students were given a task to create two cars and make them race to cross the finish. They had to learn how to code two different objects and they had to learn how to get them to work at the same time. Their ability to catch on and successfully code this scenario amazes me! They love learning how to code and problem solve!

Happy Holidays from 3rd grade!! We spent the past few library classes making holiday cards with a special touch! Students learned how to make paper circuits out of copper tape, a coin battery and an LED light! Students were given the creativity to come up with their own holiday designs for their cards. Each student was given a paper map of how to layout their copper tape, battery and LED light to make it work. I hope all their parents enjoyed their creations!

Happy Thanksgiving! Did you know that there were 102 passengers and 30 estimated crew members on the Mayflower? Third grade engineered their own Mayflower ships to see how many pilgrims they could hold before it sank. The students were given 1 foil sheet, styrofoam, 12 popsicle sticks, a straw and tape. They did not have to use all of their supplies, but they were not allowed to have any more than their determined amount. Teams of three designed their mayflowers using graphing paper before they started their build. Students reflected after their boat test and wrote about what worked well with their design, what didn't work well and what they would change next time. And the winning team with 175 pilgrims...

Third grade started to learn the basics of coding this month. We started off with an "unplugged" activity, in which the students had to figure out a path to get Rosie the dog from start to her doghouse without stepping in any puddles and collecting some bones. Students used coding cards to draw out the path Rosie was going to take. After completing their plan, students came up to the life sized game board and tested their plan for any "bugs". They even got to wear dog ears for the true game effect!