Rockin' the STEAM Family Night

My school had a STEAM Family Night this year. Each grade level set up a few stations for families to explore. In addition, there were science and engineering activities led by students from our local university, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. 

Participants received a BINGO style card with different activities in the spaces instead of numbers. They completed certain activities to fill the card. At the end of the hour, they turned in their card for a pizza meal. 

Our fifth grade stations included two Workplaces from our Bridges Math and two build-it activities. 

One of the build-it activities was a Pom Pom Launcher. 

Click here for the Google Doc for this display.

This was very popular. Almost 50 launchers were built before we ran out of supplies.

The other build-it activity was a Catapult.
Click here for Google Doc for this display.

This was also very popular

One of the Bridges Math Workplaces was Beat the Calculator.
Click here for Google Doc for this display.

A card is turned over with a math problem to solve. One person solves it mentally, while the other uses the calculator. 

The other Bridges Math Workplace was Target One Fraction Game.
Click here for Google Doc for this display.

Players each draw 5 cards and use 3 to create a whole number times fraction equation whose product is as close to one as possible. Their score is the difference between their product and one. Lowest score wins.

This was a hugely successful night. 

Rockin' the STEAM Field Trip to the TECH

The TECH Museum of Innovation in San Jose is an interactive science and technology learning center. It is an amazing place for STEAM learning and they cater to school field trips.  We are a Title 1 school so admission and the science lab were free, and the IMAX was only $3 per person. 

After four hours on the road, we made it!

We spent the first hour exploring the interactive exhibits.

Building with magnetic pieces

  

A viewing of Jupiter

Pedaling to create power

A view of the sun

Our next activity was to attend the IMAX movie, "National Parks Adventure." It celebrates the majesty of our National Parks. The IMAX at the TECH is a dome shape. This provides an amazing experience. You feel like you are flying. 

 After lunch we attended a Physics of Roller Coasters Lab. Students learned about the importance of support for a roller coaster. They then had a few challenges to complete. 

The first challenge was to engineer a short track to get a marble into a cup. It had to be able to stand on it's own. 

They tested their tracks.

They then needed to build one with a loop.

And test that one.

But not all were successful.

This one missed the cup.

 

This one came off the track.

After the lab, there was time for more exploration, like making seismic waves,

pedaling to create power,

experiencing an earthquake,

and designing a roller coaster on the computer, then experiencing it.

These are just a few of the interactive exhibits at The TECH.

In total, it was a 14 hour day for us, but so worth it!

Rockin' the STEAM Pi Day Celebration

My class celebrated Pi Day investigating Pi.

I began the day reading Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi. 

This story reveals the relationship between diameter and circumference. After the story, the students investigated this relationship using two different size lids and this paper.

First they marked the diameter of the lid four times on the line.

              

Next, they numbered the diameter marks.

 

After that, they rolled the lid on the line one complete revolution and marked where it stopped.

They discovered that this location was just past the 3 diameters mark, no matter the size of the lid. They decided that location was 3.14.

They concluded that it takes 3.14 diameters to make the circumference.

Later in the day I read Sir Cumference and the First Round Table.

This is a great book, and I think I would read it first next time since it introduces circumference, diameter, and radius. The characters are Sir Cumference, Lady Di of Ameter, and their son Radius.

The other activity we did today was to create a visual representation of Pi. I pushed out a Google Sheet template to the students through Google Classroom. They filled in the cells above each of the first 36 digits of Pi. This creates a skyscraper skyline.

Students then worked on filling in the night sky with objects from our Night Sky observation last week....moon and constellations. Some added lights to the buildings. These are still a work in progress.

One student even made it "snow."

It was a fun day of learning about Pi.

Rockin' the STEAM Flower Project

For this STEAM project, students worked in teams of four to first design a flower using pattern shapes, graph their shape choices on a Google Sheet, then calculate the cost of one flower and a dozen flowers, based on the value assigned to each shape. They also had to figure out how many flowers they could buy with $500. This gave students and opportunity to practice of our current math strategies.

This STEAM project included science of flowers, symmetry, creativity and collaboration of designing a flower, use of technology to create a bar graph, decimal addition with money, and multi-step problem solving. 

Collaborating to design a flower based on actual flower structure.

Using Google Sheets to graph the different shapes used.

Calculating the value of one flower and one dozen based on assigned values for each shape. Also figuring out how many flowers they can buy with $500. Click here for the paper.

Some students added a photo of their flower creation to their spreadsheet. Taking a photo with their standard Chromebook was not easy.