GRADE 5

May 2023

We began exploring how to code our Tello drones. We had to check our algorithms to make sure that the drone would safely operate in the middle of the classroom without colliding with the ceiling or desks.

We created animated GIFs. Our goal was to teach someone a fact about space in 2-3 seconds. Some students used Pixilart and Google Slides to create their animations. Other students creaed their animations using camera, green screen, editing software.

April 2023

We designed, built, and tested hydraulic marble mazes with cardboard, hot glue, syringes, plastic tubes, and water.

March 2023

We began researching the issue of “space junk” or orbital debris. Did you know this might even be a problem? We started by analyzing images from a recent news article about the topic.

Next, we read an a second article that described the types of debris and trash that exist in space due to human activity. We wrote down what we learned and shared it in a "board meeting."

Then, we read a bipartisan bill that had been proposed in the United States Senate. The bill described some of the concerns the Senators had about space debris and would direct funding to studying the issue. We also discussed how Congress often needs to pass legislation to address issues like this one.

Finally, we used what we had learned to practice writing letters to our Pennsylvania Senators about the issue.

February 2023

We used the NASA-themed Space Jam application on code.org to make music using real data about planets and their orbits. By the end of the tutorial, students created their own musical solar system, with banging drums and out-of-this-world melodies.

Some students began working on projects that could be entered in the Philadelphia Media and Design Competition. Students are using different digital tools to create the projects, like iMovie and cameras from our school's WHYY Media Lab to make a digital movie. One group made a stop motion movie. Another group created an original rap and music video. This work involved storyboarding, scripting, and editing. Other students pursued projects of interest like making beats, designing in Tinkercad, designing buttons in Adobe Express, and recording interviews in the podcasting booth.

January 2023

To develop our digital literacy skills for designing things with digital tools, we designed buttons using Google Draw and Adobe Express. We discussed how many of the space missions involving astronauts have patch designs that are kind of like the buttons we'd be making. In designing our buttons, we had to pay attention to:

• Sizing of our canvas and circles;

• Margins around our designs to ensure the design would show up properly when put in the button maker;

• Gradients;

• Fonts and text alignment; and

• Whether there was enough contrast to read text placed on top of images.

We printed our designs and pressed together the buttons using a button maker.

We’ve added a sensor and arm to our base LEGO rover models. We had to follow three sets of instructions to build each component. Our goal was to program the rover so that it senses a nearby package or object and picks it up with its arm.

December 2022

We created a model of the Martian surface with its craters to create a course for our LEGO robots to navigate. The course design was inspired by a NASA Jet Propulsion Lab project. We coded our robots to avoid the craters.

We continued to figure out what our LEGO robots could do by setting up obstacles to navigate around.

November 2022

We continued building a base LEGO robot rover with the help of a tutorial. We also began coding our robots to move around the room. Our goal was to figure out what kinds of things our robots could do.

We began building a base LEGO robot rover with the help of a tutorial. We'll be coding our robots to complete a NASA-inspired mission.

We began assembling the parts we will need to build LEGO robot rovers from a NASA-inspired mission.

October 2022

After viewing a video showing how we could use conductive and nonconductive dough to create circuits, we began making our own conductive dough. We needed to measure a number of materials, mix them, heat them on a hot plate, and knead the dough. We then made space-themed designs and connected them to a Makey Makey to control our “Avoid the Asteroid” games that we made in Scratch.

We’re still using Scratch, this time to create a space-themed game. A spaceship needs to avoid asteroids (and collect fuel). We needed to create variables (for health and speed) and clones. Here's what we started with. And here's a game about a shark avoiding trash that we used as inspiration for the space game.

We kicked off our first project by breaking out our Makey Makey kits to see how they work. We used them to play a space-themed game Mr. Smith made in code.org Game Lab using up, down, left, and right inputs. We will be dreaming up new physical input designs and coding stories or games, all inspired by what we’re learning by space.

August 2022

This year, we will be learning about space and NASA. We created a simple website using Google Sites that we will update throughout the year. The website serve as a portfolio that will show what we make and learn throughout the year. We made a homepage with a header photo. 

We also made an "About Me" page with photos, text, and an embedded video. We discussed what kinds of personal information we would and would not want to put on the website.