This week in STEM, the 3/4 class finished their children’s stories on extreme weather events. They used creative writing to teach about extreme weather events such as hurricanes, heat waves, and blizzards. We used the “Magic School Bus” as inspiration, thinking about how those stories blend fun, child-friendly stories with accurate science to teach children.… Read more The Magic VDS Bus Explores Extreme Weather!
As we continue to learn about extreme weather events, this week in STEM, the 3/4 class focused on one important feature of weather, precipitation. After learning about precipitation and how it works, they took on two engineering challenges. On Tuesday, we took advantage of a rainy day to design a structure that could withstand the… Read more Engineering Challenges: Precipitation and Flooding
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class brainstormed what they need to know in order to answer their driving question, How can we write a book to teach the VDS community about extreme weather events? In this project they’ll learn about weather and climate, how meteorologists use features such as wind, humidity, and precipitation when… Read more Exploring Weather and Climate, and Engineering Tools to Measure Wind Speed!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class was introduced to our final STEM project of the year, on extreme weather events. To kick off the project, they played a trivia game to check for prior knowledge on weather and climate, and took part in an engineering design challenge. After watching a video on how structural… Read more Kicking off our new project on Extreme Weather!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class finished their portfolio reflections on their work during the project on electricity and energy sources. After they were done, they reviewed the Engineering Design Process as they tackled a new design challenge: to create a marble maze that took a marble 60 to complete. The 3/4s did a… Read more STEM Challenge- Marble Maze!
This week in STEM, the 3/4s applied all that they learned about energy production, electrical generators, the relationship between magnets and electricity, and how electricity works, to design and build a new, innovative way to produce electricity. With the goal being to spin the generator, they came up with many creative ways to do this.… Read more Designing new ways to produce electricity!
This week in STEM, the 3/4 class explored alternative ways to produce electricity. We have been learning about electricity and how magnets and copper wire are used to produce electricity. They applied this to two different ways to produce electricity: a turbine that converted wind power into electricity, and a hand crank that converted mechanical… Read more Exploring Alternative Ways to Produce Electricity
This week in STEM, the 3/4s explored how fossil fuels, wind, and water are used to generate electricity- specifically, they investigated the steps taken in each process to get a turbine, and a generator to spin, thereby creating electricity. The goal of this was to focus on the fact that if we can get the… Read more Spinning Gears!
This week in STEM, the 3/4s explored how to make electricity, and what parts we need to allow electricity to flow. Specifically, they investigated static electricity and how it works, and learned about current and circuits. They practiced drawing complete and incomplete circuits, and analyzing different circuits to see why they worked or didn’t work.… Read more How do we make electricity?
This week in STEM, the 3/4s brainstormed what the need to know to answer their driving question: How can we, as energy consumers, design a new method to produce electricity? Some of the ideas that they came up with include: How do we produce electricity? How does electricity work? How are magnets related to electricity?… Read more Electricity and Circuits