SAGE Update December 16, 2011

5th Grade SAGE

We are developing as scientists! After working in pairs, then designing and conducting a whole class experiment, AND THEN redesigning the experiment to conduct it one last time, WE HAVE FINALLY GOTTEN SOME COSISTENT and DEFENDABLE RESULTS in our paper towel absorbency experiments. Below are copies of the data from each class's "Take 2" of the whole class absorbency experimentation.  (Ask your child what it has taken for us to get these results . . . it's taken a lot of persistence, thoughtfulness, and precision.

 As we saw a consistent pattern emerge from our data, we began to get a clear picture of how our 4 brands stacked up against each other for absorbency. In the weeks after the break, we'll be examining the wet strength of our products on our way to determining an overall "best value" recommendation. The final recommendation will also take into consideration the products' cost and how much paper towel comes on each roll. Stay tuned, we're moving into the exciting part of the unit, but we've still got a lot of hard work ahead of us.

4th Grade SAGE

The 4th graders are gaining a good handle on the attributes and costs of the 6 polygons we're using to construct our cities.  Each class determined the areas of each polygon, and from that information has determined the cost of each one.  The equilateral triangle and the regular pentagon were the trickiest to determine area for.

The cost of each square unit is $26.25.  Students used this figure to determine the costs of each polygon.  This is the first time they've been able to get an idea of how big they can build their buildings, since they now know the cost of each piece.   The budget of $50,000 per student for two buildings just came into a better focus for many of our students.

We determined the formula for determining the area of triangles.



The regular pentagon



Can you figure the area of the equilateral triangle?

3rd Grade SAGE

Our third graders are well on their way to telling the Chief Investigator (me) their theories for who they believed borrowed Mr.  Bear.  Their final project is a memo from themselves to me outlining the reasons they believe one or more people borrowed the bear.

To help them organized their thinking, they are using a PowerPoint template. To finalize their memo, they will transfew their thoughts to the memo and then edit them for grammar, spelling, and transitions.   Here's a few samples of student writing.

SAGE Update - November 23, 2011

5th Grade SAGE
Over the last two weeks, each of the classes has been working to design and conduct an experiment that the entire class would use to determine the ranking of the 4 paper towel brands based on absorbency.  This is part of our  quest to evaluate the overall value of our 4 brands in order to recommend the brand to our friends and families.  


As we've discovered rather quickly, being good scientists takes a lot of hard work.  Each step in our experimentation has to be scrutinized for its effectiveness and for how it keeps to our standards for creating a fair and accurate test.  We've exercised perseverance, creativity, and problem solving skills to create tests that we'd confidently stand behind as people looked into our scientific methods.  Interestingly, no class has created "the perfect experiment" that would do away with every possible error, and no class has been able to perfectly control every one of our controlled variables.  We've decided that we'd need pretty sophisticated equipment to be able to do that.


Given our limitations, we're forging forward with our investigations.  As we go on, I will post pictures of each class's investigation, and will have the students from each class evaluate the different experiments for their effectiveness.  I'm looking forward to the experiments!

UPDATE:  Creekside's experimentation went pretty well, but in a quick check of our results, we realized we do not have a finding that we could confidently present to the public yet.  (You can find our data, and questions the Creekside students need to answer regarding the testing.)

(Here's Part of Creekside's Writeup)

 

4th Grade

In 4th grade, we're in the midst of our first 90 minutes of experimental building with our 6 polygons. One of  the best ways to enhance creativity is just to give someone the gift of time . . . Generally, the more time someone spends exploring and experimenting, the more creative they are in their investigation and in their productivity.  I discovered that the buildings students created was enhanced quite a bit by simply giving them time to try different ideas out.

At the same time, we're working as a class to determine the areas of each of our different polygons.  Squares and rectangles are fairly easy to deterine, but the three triangles and the regular pentagon present more of a challenge.  Once we determine the areas of each shape, we'll then be able to calculate the cost of each piece.  This will allow each student to begin to get a sense for how far $50,000 budget will take them in their process of building a home and a public building.

 

 

Partners determining the areas of each of the 6 polygons.

 



Each team records their finding for the area.  Eventually, we must all agree on the area of each piece based on "good math" and with precision.

 

3rd Grade

With the Thanksgiving break and with conferences, our 3rd grade classes have separated a bit in their progress through the Mr. Bear Unit. 

Creekside students were able to visit the "State Crime Lab" on Monday to do 10 different experiments related to the evidence found at the scene of the mystery.  Students gathered this newest information and compared it with the information they'd gathered through visiting the mystery scene and through tracking the account of what took place leading up to the mystery.  With all of the different pieces of information at hand, students entered the final stages of deciding who borrowed Mr. Bear.  In the upcoming weeks, they will be creating a memo to send to the Chief Investigator - me - to lay out their evidence for who they believed borrowed Mr. Bear.  At the end of the unit, they will read their memos to me and all their fellow investigators.  At that time, we will assess the investigative efforts of each member of the team.

Grand Ridge has not met for the last two weeks.  In our last two classes, we had been investigating fingerprints.  We've learned the three main types of fingerprints - loops, whorls, and arches.  And, we've discovered the "normal" percentages of each type that are found in the world.  After doing a check of fingerprints for each person in our class, with the help of jeweler's loupes, we took a gathered the data for our entire class.  Students finished up the investigation by analyzing their own fingerprint types to those of our entire class as well as to the overall percentages for the world.  Maybe you can get your fingerprints analyzed by your child!

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	 Creekside 3rd Grade visits the "State Crime Lab." 

SAGE Update - November 10, 2011

Google Sketch-up (CONTINUED ANOTHER WEEK)

Many students have begun to experiment with Google Sketch-up, the CAD program that allows users to create 3-D objects online.  Experimenting with Sketch-up is this week's optional activity for SAGE  students. 

Sketch-up can be used for activities as simple as creating a 3-D box, and for complex activities such as recreating 3-D depictions of historic buildings or streets scenes.  Some high school teachers are actually having their students create a building from their community's past as they learn state and local history. Amazingly, people who create the buildings can have them added to Google Earth.

You will need to download the application onto your computer.  If your children create drawings, they can e-mail me a picture of whatever they create. 

5th Grade

This week was a time for us to demonstrate our abilities as thinkers.  Our time was dominated by the demonstration and explanation of our first absorbency experiments to one another.  Each team took their turn to do a "dry run-through" of their experiment, with the rest of the class giving them feedback in the form of "Aha's," "Questions," and "Red Flags."  Here's what each of these entailed.  

• Aha's – Something you saw or learned that you'd like to add to your own experiment (ing.)
• Questions – Something you'd like to ask the presenters about. It could be a "why" question, a "how" question, a "what would you do" question, or a "did you think about" question.
• Red Flags – This is a "caution" or "warning" you have about some aspect of the experiment. It respectfully points out an error in written procedure or in the experimenting itself.

The beauty of the feedback was this:  since our objective as a class was to see what we could take away from these experiments that would help us be better scientists, we were all learning from each other.  And, as we watched each group, we found take-aways that led us to some general rules.  For instance, Monday's class at Creekside realized that it was important to always have accurate tools for measuring - whether it was measuring the time a towel soaked, or the amount of liquid being poured onto the paper towel, or even the amount of water that wasn't absorbed by the paper towel, exactness of measurement was crucial in finding reliable results.  

Next week, we'll pool all of our knowledge and wisdom to create one experiment for the entire class to perform that we believe will help us to accurately determine the absorbency ability of each paper towel brand.

Anish and Ashley explain their absorbency experiment.

Sammy and Angela share their experiment with the Thursday class.

 


Aliya and Zoe listen to a question a student has about their experiment.





 

4th Grade

The 4th graders at Creekside worked to determine theirclass's top 30 buildings.  They made it through their top 25 so far. Here's their results.  (Grand Ridge will be working next week to do the same thing, since Friday was a holiday this week. What do you think of our list?  Are there any buildings you can think of that should be there that aren't?

Creekside 4th grade top 30 buildings (so far.)

3rd Grade

Along with the Mr. Bear activities this week, our 3rd Graders are learning the value of PERSISTENCE and CREATIVITY as they tackle a tough set of Toothpick Puzzles.  These puzzles exercise their spatial problem solving "muscles" by asking them to rearrange a set of toothpicks to certain specified designs. The persistence comes in with the "fish problem" when the students realize that the obvious strategy for rearranging them doesn't work.  Most students find this very disheartening and a huge obstacle to overcome.  (Many of them are used to things coming to them easily, and it's not a fun experience when a problem doesn't.)

Here's the fish problem.  PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't help your students solve it.  You'll take away the main part of the challenge that the problem represents for them.  (If you'd like to give it a try yourself, make sure he or she isn't around to peek.  They're very tempted to peek at others' solutions for this one!

SAGE UPDATE November 4, 2011

Google Sketch-up

Google Sketch-up allows users to create 3-D objects online.  It can be used for activities as simple as creating a 3-D box, and for complex activities such as recreating 3-D depictions of historic buildings or streets scenes.  Some high school teachers are actually having their students create a building from their community's past as they learn state and local history. Amazingly, people who create the buildings can have them added to Google Earth.

Experimenting with Sketch-up is this week's optional activity for SAGE  students.  You will need to download the application onto your computer.  If your children create drawings, they can e-mail me a picture of whatever they create. 




Max was the first to send in a creation. Here's his building.



Eric created a chair.  You can see how versitile the program is.

5th Grade

Teams of 5th graders began their initial experiments to assist us in determining the best quality paper towel brand of our four mystery brands.  Three of the brands are "leading brands" -- you can take my word on that -- and, one is a store brand. This go-around, we're testing for absorbency.  In a few weeks, we'll begin testing the wet strength of each product.  Along the way, students will learn how to design and conduct an experiment using the scientific method.  In addition, students will learn the value of using the scientific method.  

At the same time, our students are bouncing around the idea of creating different videos to get the idea of "Caveat Emptor" out to their schoolmates. Some are thinking of superhero sketches, while others are toying with the idea of a newscast.  We'll see if we can put our creative and technical powers together to come up with some video productions over the next few months.

  

Students at Grand Ridge conducting the initial absorbency experiments.



 

4th Grade

This week, teams finalized their lists of the top 30 buildings, and at Grand Ridge we began our process to determine the class's top 30 by compiling our scores into one large spreadsheet. 

In addtion to the work to determine the buildings in our community, we continued to talk about our BIG 4 questions for the year.  This week's focus was on:  "What makes a successful community?"  That might be an interesting subject for a car ride this week.  It would be great for your son or daughter to hear what you think about the issue.


 

Members of our Creekside class working on their "Top 30" list.

  

Grand Ridge students discuss the attributes of one of the 6 Polyhedraville basic polygons during their gallery walk.



















3rd Grade Students in 3rd grade explored the world of fingerprints this week.  Students paired up to learn about the 3 general types of fingerprints, and then examined their own prints to determine the types for each of the 10 prints. What type of prints did your child have?  Were they all the same type?  Did their prediction about the type(s) they have hit the mark?  All these questions were discovered this week. 

Determining her thumb print.

Students learned about the types of prints and then predicted the type(s) they'd have before examining their prints.  Here, the student is entering his prediction.





SAGE UPDATE FOR OCTOBER 28, 2011

Weekly Brainteasers

A few weeks back, I began regularly offering students an OPTIONAL online brainteaser/puzzle/challenge activity to take on during the week.  It provides them an opportunity to stimulate their brains in a fun and engaging way, and it also allows them an opportunity for a little friendly competition during the week as well as throughout the year.  Students can send in their results via the forms below the weekly link.  The student who tries the most activities by the end of the year will earn a small trophy.  My plan is to put a new challenge on the blog every week or two.  Students can find them on the Interesting Sites and other "Stuff" page.


3rd Grade

In our second week of the Mr.  Bear Mystery,  we spent about an hour in each class drawing our whole group mystery scene maps.  This was no easy feat . . . it took a great deal of cooperation, communication, spatial problem solving, and compromise.  With nearly a dozen different investigators in each class, we found that agreeing on what we observed at the scene.  We're also getting better and better at realizing that some of what we thought were facts actually turned out to be our opinions. 

This week, we got to hear the story of the mysterious happenings that took place among the members of the Stuffed Animal Adventure Club. The story contains dozens of details, so it is a huge challenge (actually impossible) for any one student to record them all as he/she listened.  When the story was over, we collaborated to compile all the details into one form.   Below is the form we used on the ActivBoard to help us compile and track them.

4th Grade

4th graders are in the process of deciding the top 30 buildings of this year's Polyhedraville city.  The two classes began their exploration by brainstorming as many possibilities as they could in one 20 minute sitting.  I showed you one class's list last time. 

After generating huge lists, teams eliminated duplicates and combined those that made sense to do so.  This week, each class finalized their three criteria they'd agreed upon to use to determine each building's worthiness to be included in the city.  You can see them below.  Individual teams determined their top 30 buildings by scoring each building (1-5) for each of the 3 criteria.  In the video below, you can peek into a conversation one team had about scoring one of the buildings on their list. 

Top 30 Polyhedraville Buildings - Grand Ridge
Criteria #1	Will it have a positive effect on our community?
Criteria #2	Will it help our economy; will it serve enough people to stay in business?
Criteria #3	Does it cover our needs and wants?

Top 30 Polyhedraville Buildings - Creekside
Criteria #1	Is it important for our community?  Do we need it?
Criteria #2	Is it most useful to help us?  Is it good for us?
Criteria #3	Will we have it in 2211?



5th Grade

Our 5th graders are beginning to do the prep work for helping the consumers of the world make a thoughtful choice about which brand of paper towel is the best value.  After spending several weeks investigation the variety of techniques ad-makers use to get unsuspecting consumers to fall prey to their subtle ways and thoughtlessly buy their products, we are ready to begin the hard work to scientifically test one of those products - paper towel brands - to determine which would be the best buy.  Caveat Emptor!!!  We're here to help you!

This week's work was primarily to investigate the ads of yester-year to find the strategies and claims that the product makers used to get their paper towels into the hands of consumers.  A few of them are linked below.  Maybe you remember one or two of them.

Scott Towel - 1972  Can you find any misdirection? How about exaggeration?

Bounty - 1971  Do you remember this slogan?  Is there any misdirection in this one?

I'm pretty sure we can do a better job of testing the major paper towel brands than these guys!  Stay tuned!

Week 3 Update.


3rd Grade

To begin our Mr. Bear Mystery unit, third Grade visited the scene of a mystery this week.  Before heading off to the scene, we discussed a variety of terms related to mysteries:  mystery, crime, suspect, and evidence were just a few.  We also talked about the thinking skills that detectives need to use to solve crimes or mysteries.  Here's a list.  We'll be using all of these thinking skills and more as we work to solve our mystery.

•Observing

•Comparing & Contrasting

•Fact & Opinion

•Sequencing

•Cause and Effect

•Summarizing

•Inferring

•Analyzing



4th Grade
4th graders spent a good portion of the week brainstorming buildings that would be in Polyhedrville.  They first spent time on their own listing ideas, and then they came together as a whole class to do so. (Here's a sample from one of the classes.) 

In the upcoming week, they'll narrow their search to a manageable number so they can go through the subsequent steps to narrow their list to the top 30 buildings. 

The next step will be to create a criteria by which we judge each of the buildings on our list to determine if it would deserve to be on the top 30 list.  After that, we'll give each building a score, and find out how they all stack up against each other.

5th Grade
CAVEAT EMPTOR!   That's the cry that can be heard from the far reaches of the 5th Grade SAGE empire these days!  Well, that might be a little dramatic, but it is our motto as we've been evaluating magazine ads as a mini-unit leading up to our paper towel unit. We spent a few class periods examining some of the techniques admakers use to create their tempting messages - one student described it as a trap that they set to entice you into buying their products.  Over the next several weeks, we'll be scientifically investigating one specific product - paper towels - to see if we can create a good set of investigations to really determine which product is the best value.  It is our goal to help the buyers out there be more thoughtful consumers.

By the way, keep your eyes peeled for CAVEAT EMPTOR MAN.  He may be coming to a theater - or maybe just a  computer screen - near you in the upcoming weeks.  (That is, if the 5th graders  at Creekside have their way . . .)  You can check out some fun ads below.

SAGE: Week 2 Review

Here's what we did in our second week of SAGE.


3rd Grade

This week, we did a few interesting activities.  Each 3rd grade group spent time analyzing the poem below.  Can you figure out why I had them go through the exercise?  You might ask your child the meaning of the poem.

COME TO THE EDGE

by Christopher Logue

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came
and he pushed
and they flew...

We also tried our hands at synergizing by building paper towers.  The task was simple; construct the tallest tower that you can in 18 minutes out of 3 pieces of 8.5 x 11 copy paper.  Here are a few of the entries.  Find out what went well with your child's tower, and what his/her team could have improved on.

4th Grade

Here's a poem the 4th graders began to analyze at Grand Ridge (we'll be doing it at Creekside next week.)  Each child takes time to read through the poem and pick out a phrase that speaks to him/her in some significant way.  After that, we read the poem as a class.  I read the entire poem, and the students read the phrase that they have selected.  Sometimes I'm reading my myself; sometimes I'm reading with one other student; and, sometimes I'm reading with several students.  It is quite a powerful activity.  After reading the poem together, we go back and share why we've selected the passages we have.  We learn a lot about courage and about each other through the activity.  Here's the poem.

COURAGE, Author Unknown

Courage is the strength to stand up
When it's easier to fall down and lose hold.

It is the conviction to explore new horizons
When it's easier to believe what we've been told.

Courage is the desire to maintain our integrity
When it's easier to look the other way.

It is feeling happy and alive, and moving forward
When it's easier to feel sorry for ourselves and stay.

Courage is the will to shape our world
When it's easier to let someone else do it for us.

It is the recognition that none of us are perfect
When it's easier to criticize others and fuss.

Courage is the power to step forward and lead
When it's easier to follow the crowd; their pleas resound.

It is the spirit that places you on top of the mountain
When it's easier to never leave the ground.

The foundation of courage is solid,
The rock that doesn't roll.

Courage is the freedom
Of our mind, body, and soul.

5th Grade

Every 5th grader participated on a team that took part in The Marshmallow Challenge.  Interestingly enough, we learned afterward that it was actually quite helpful to be successful in the challenge to think like a kindergartner.  As it turns out, kindergartners are more successful at the challenge than most other age groups - even adults.  To find out why, ask your child, then watch the video for Marshmallow Challenge video.  It might not be for the reason you think it is. 

P.S.  You may be interested to know that 1 of our 8 teams ended the challenge with a tower that was standing. 

Here are a few photos of our efforts.

 

First Day of SAGE 2011-12

Hi all,

Here's a quick update of our first day activities.  Each grade did a variation of the following 3 activities.

1.  Knotty Rope Challenge or the "Graberizer" Challenge.  (Ask your child about how these challenges can help them learn about facing other group challenges they get in school.)

 

  

The Graberizer and the Knotty Rope Challenges Causing These Team Fits!

 2.)  SAGE computer survey. 

3.)  Posters about SAGE.

• 3rd Grade - How does a classroom that is a "Safe Place to Make Mistakes" and a "Safe Place to Take Risks" look and sound?
• 4th Grade - Which of the 7 Habits does SAGE most involve for SAGE students? How does SAGE involve that Habit.
• 5th Grade - The same as 3rd grade PLUS "what does a classroom look like that has 'Respectful Teaching.'"  Here's the quote they worked from: 

"All tasks should respect each learner . . . Every student should be required to think at a high level and should findhis or her work interesting and powerful."  Carol Ann Tomlinson

4th Graders Looked at How The 7 Habits for Happy Kids Might Relate To SAGE