Coding in 1st Grade

Now that our nest building project is finished, we have been working on computer coding in class in several different ways.  Students are learning to think through a task logically and put the steps in the correct sequence.  They have to test their program and fix errors, then test again.  With so many electronic devices in the world, from our computers, iPads, and smartphones to microwaves, thermostats, and cars, coding is a skill that will be required in many future careers!  We have several great iPad apps that teach coding in a fun gamified way.  Kids love to play Kodable especially.  We also recently used a website called learn.code.org and another app called Hopscotch to write some more complex code.  

This week the kids designed roads and then programmed the robot roamers to follow the path and stay on their road.  Here are some robot programmers in action.  Notice the code they were writing down on their iPads in many of the pictures - the arrows that tell the robot which way to go.  Isaiah even invented his own shortcut way of writing the code.  Instead of writing 4 forward arrows, he just wrote one arrow and put a 4 under it to show how many times to repeat that command!

DFW Earth Day 2014

Today the 1st graders celebrated Earth Day at the airport.  There were live animals, fossils, handouts with tips about protecting the environment and a concert by a band called Vocal Trash featuring instruments made from recycled materials.  Students learned about the life cycle of a butterfly and got to go inside a tent with live butterflies.  They got to see and touch some live animals that we share the earth with like a snake, turtle, skink, tarantula, opossum, chinchilla, and more!  We heard lots of ways to protect our world.  Here are some of our adventures:

We saw all the stages of a butterfly's life cycle: eggs, caterpillars, chyrsalis, and adult butterflies.

The biggest skull below is a sea turtle.

Above are some dragonfly nymphs and other young insects that can be found in water.  Below are some of the live animals we saw.

We also saw a giant model that showed how water can erode the soil.  That does not look like a safe place to build that cabin!

The kids had a great time and should be able to tell their parents lots of ideas about how to protect our world!  And all our chaperones deserve a big thanks for their hard work!

Earthworms!

One of the things we are learning about right now is earthworms.  This is connected to our garden plot and what we are learning about living things like plants and how living things interact.  We have already been reading about worms and how they help plants, but today we got a little more "up close and personal" with some live earthworms.  Students got to touch them to see how they reacted and feel their bodies to see if we could feel the little bristles that help them move.  They also noticed that the worms did not like the light and kept trying to go underground.  You can see some 1st graders intently observing their worms in these photos:

Legoland Field Trip

Yesterday's trip to Legoland was a big hit with the kids!  Like the song says, everything was awesome! We began with the introduction in the factory area:

Then we tried to save the princess by shooting trolls on the laser ride.  Next students had a bit of free play time in the giant climbing area:

Then our group had our building class.  Students learned how to give their structures a strong, wide base to make them less wobbly so they could stand up during an earthquake.  They worked as a team to build tall towers.  Students also learned vocabulary like architect, base, and natural disaster.  Here are some of our sturdy and not-so-sturdy towers:

After our class we had a little more time, so we went to see Miniland, which had fantastic Lego models of many DFW area landmarks:

Our last stop before leaving was to drive the Lego cars.  Here are some great 1st grade drivers:

Thanks so much to all our parent chaperones!  I really appreciated all your work keeping up with our very excited kids!  It was awesome!

Learning to Code

Today my class learned some more about writing computer programs.  We have already worked on this with apps like Kodable and Hopscotch.  The students are learning to put the commands they want to use in a logical order to carry out a task.  Today we went to a website called learn.code.org and created our own versions of the Flappy Bird game.  The website has a nice tutorial that took us through the process step-by-step and then the final step was to design their own game.  Some students made the game character change locations as they played or created a game where you got points for crashing on the ground - a point for each bounce!  Some kids created an endless game that you can never lose.  Most of the kids have posted a link to their game on our class blog today.  You can try out their games by going to their posts here.  You can also go to the original site and try to make your own version or let your child show you how they program the game.  Here's my undersea version!

Stepping Stones Engineering Project

Our students were presented with a real life problem and they are working to solve it.  The problem is that it can get very muddy around our garden area at school.  We don't want to work on the gardens and then come back inside with muddy shoes.  We are working to design stepping stones to go around the garden plots on the playground.  Students have already designed the shape for their stone.  Today we were working to create a mosaic design to decorate the stones.  Here are some artists hard at work on their designs!

Building Challenge

Students worked with partners to build a structure that could hold a heavy container of washers and that had an opening that we could slide a plastic cup through.  They earned more points for using fewer blocks in their designs.  Then, if they achieved these things, we gave their buildings a little "earthquake" test...  Here are our engineers hard at work!