Our kindergarten students practiced their typing skills "unplugged" through the use of Bee-Bots! Students had a list of words to "type" on the giant keyboard, but they had to program the Bee-Bots to type the words. 

Lovin Elementary is proud to present our first annual Kindergarten Thanksgiving Day Parade! This is the culmination of an integrated STEAM unit. Students read the book "Balloon's Over Broadway" with our media specialist, composed music with our music teacher, built their balloons with our STEM specialist, and coded their robots to drive in front of the green screen in computer science class.

First grade students used our Lego Spike Essential kits to build and program light machines. First, students designed their machines in their STEAM notebooks. Next, they worked together to build them out of our lego kits. Finally, they used the Lego Spike application to code their machine to communicate "yes", "no", and "I don't know" using different lights and durations. 

Students practiced their online research skills by selecting their favorite animal and used Pebble Go to learn about that animal's habitat, food, life span, and other fun facts! We then practiced our typing skills by creating a class ebook on Zoology through Google Slides. We then used green screen technology to take pictures of each student and put a picture of the animal they researched behind them! 

Our second-graders learned about hardware and software using our Bee-Bots. Students mapped out a maze for their bee-bot, ensuring it only drove to the hardware icons and avoided the software. They utilized collaboration and coding skills to complete this task.

Our second graders explored force and motion by planning and building a maze for Dash. They then collaborated to code Dash to successfully complete the maze. The requirements were:

Dash must travel at least 3 meters in order to complete your maze.

Dash must successfully complete at least 4 turns in your maze.

Dash must conquer an obstacle that he needs to push or pull out of the way in order to continue through your maze.

Dash must break through an obstacle in order to continue through your maze.

Dash must encounter a change in the surface of your maze for at least 50 centimeters.

Our third graders worked collaboratively in groups to integrate art, science, and technology to make their own stop-motion short films showing the fossilization process. Students first planned their scenes in their STEAM notebooks, then they created their props using a variety of materials. Finally, they used our iPads to record their stop-motion movies using the stop-motion app.

Our third graders created digital presentations to teach our kindergarten classes all about composting! Students worked collaboratively in groups to build the presentations. They then practiced their presenting skills during their civics special areas class. 

As part of the fourth grade PBL, students filmed meteorology reports during Computer Science. Students were responsible for looking up the weather data for the week, adding the correct information to the teleprompter slides, finding the correct background image, and then they had to decide who would film, who would work the teleprompter, and who would be on camera. All students participated in some part of the filming process.

Students worked in groups to create a phases of the moon mat to drive their Sphero robots on. They had to have all eight phases of the moon represented, labeled, along with how much light is visible during that phase. As they were programming their Sphero to represent the moon and drive through the cycle, they changed the brightness of the Sphero to show how much the moon would be illuminated at that point in the cycle. 

We worked with GIS mapping during CS as part of their Earth Science PBL. Students used real-world GIS databases to research their erosion site and then continued to work in their STEAM notebooks on their plan and design.

As a review before their cells assessment, students chose either a plant or animal cell and used our 3-d Printing Pens to trace the cells with their correct organelles. Students were then able to glue their prints into their STEAM notebooks and take them with them!

As part of their conversion unit in math, students worked with functions in Scratch (a block-based coding platform) to create their own customary conversion calculator. Students had to input the correct mathematical algorithms into the coding algorithm so that they could provide their program with a unit and it would then successfully convert it to either a larger or smaller unit of measurement.