Our third STEAM activity once again had my students thinking like a scientist and engineer - but this time to learn more about Great White Sharks. Using the book, Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark Became the Ocean's Most Fearless, I introduced the importance of wanting to learn more about something you are passionate about, regardless of what anyone may think. I combined that with some facts from Great White Sharks (Nature's Children) to set the stage for what scientists already know about Great White Sharks. After listening to the story, we jumped into our STEAM activity. Our challenge was to create something new and innovative that would help scientists learn more about Great White Sharks. I told the students that they could not simply copy something that they know is already available (like a tracker attached to a shark), but they could use it as their starting point and turn it into what I call "the 50 million dollar idea" (if I gave them 50 million dollars to make their idea even better, unique, and something that will help others, I would give them the money on the spot). They could use LEGOs or their computer for research and prototyping. They came up with some great ideas and are on their way to being scientists and engineers with big ideas and dreams!
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Well, even the best laid out plans can even result in a plan B, right? I am in my second rotation of STEAM classes right now and today was planned as Fun Friday #1, but....the Internet was out in my district. So that meant no typing and no online activities in our socially distanced classrooms with no shared materials. An hour of doing LEGOs sitting in a seat is not even my idea of a super fun time. Don't get me wrong, I like LEGOs, but it is Friday, warm, and then end of a long full week. I knew that wouldn't fly with myself or students. So, insert plan B. One of the things my own 3rd grade son had to do for one of his remote learning activities was teach someone how to draw something. So he showed me how to draw a beaker and then we got creative adding faces. It was fun to spend that time with him and learning from him! And it came in clutch this morning when I needed to scrap Fun Friday and come up with a non-digital activity without sharing anything. Hello directed drawing from last night! I put a little twist on the beaker drawing though - this was going to be our secret potion for turning someone into a shark (or Dakuwaqua like from our STEAM Activity #1 Choice Board!). The students came up with so many creative beakers - ones with bubbles, one with shark fins, and always a story to share about how it would turn someone into a shark! 😉 Whew! We made it through our first week of our Digital Citizenship Shark Week! I am so happy that I designed this unit the way that I did for the two week Specials rotations we have at school. This will get each class started off with the same important information about digital citizenship, but it also works in so many STEAM elements. I am breaking up the digital citizenship lessons with a STEAM lesson in between. This has really helped the students stay engaged in the digital citizenship lessons as they know there are STEAM activities worked into those lessons as well as the lesson for the next day. So why not celebrate with a little Fun Friday?! This is where we put what we learned about personal and private information into practice by signing up for a Nitro Type account. We learned how to sign into an online service using our Google account, and then created our public racing name. We talked about how we don't want to use any private information for this name, as others will see it. After we did some racing, I mean typing practice, I gave them a Fun Friday Choice Board that had other shark and digital citizenship activities they could choose from. I was surprised at how many students simply wanted to keep on working on Nitro Type! It was fun as we learned how to add each other as friends and race against one another. Of course, they all wanted to race me and see if they could beat the teacher! They learned quickly that they need to practice some more, but will definitely be challenging me in the future. It was definitely a great way to spend our Friday as teaching and learning is absolutely draining on everyone right now - teachers and students!
Our second STEAM activity turned out to be even more interesting for students than I thought it would be! I shared with them that there are threats that sharks face every day in their daily lives of simply surviving (found in the book, Sharks: A 400 Million Year Journey). The students seemed so surprised as we had previously talked about how sharks are apex predators and there are not many other species that feed on them as prey. I introduced five (5) facts that sharks face - longlines, nets, shark finning, pollution, and habitat destruction. Some of these were new to students in that they hadn't thought they were something that affected sharks (nets, pollution, and habitat destruction) and some were new as they had not heard of them before (longlines and shark finning). I knew that the shark finning could potentially be a sensitive topic for students, but I was absolutely blow away by how seriously they took that particular threat to sharks and passionate about finding a solution to stopping it.
After discussing the different threats, I explained to the students that they would be working as scientists and engineers that day. We were going to use the Engineering Design Process to engineer a scientific solution to one of the threats that sharks face. I let each student choose the threat that they would like to explore further. They had opportunities to research more if they needed to, ask me any questions (we often researched together based on based on our conversations!), and have lots of creating, testing, improving, and sharing. We used LEGOs as our prototyping material (in the presentation I have digital Plus Plus blocks for my remote learners) and created so many cool things! Some of the solutions that students came up with:
Our second Digital Citizenship lesson was all about Safety and Security. We ready the story Friends Don't Eat Friends as our intro to our lesson. We determined that Shark did not actually eat Bob and that he was truly playing Hide and Go Seek at the end of Misunderstood Shark. For this lesson, I really wanted students to understand the difference between personal and private information and how some people will use clickbait to try and get people to click on links. Similar to that of our first lesson, much of the information I gathered was from Common Sense Media's Digital Citizenship Curriculum and I put a shark spin on it.
As many of my students haven't used Google Slides or some of the tools beyond basic text and inserting an image, I felt this Shark Shapegram activity would give them an opportunity to see the different tools available in Google Slides as well as how they can combine shapes to make a design. I feel my students definitely had a productive struggle with this activity and I am all for that! I keep on reminding them that in STEAM class, we do hard things because when we do hard things, our brain grows. I think we had some big brains after this class!
Today we dove into Digital Citizenship fins first! Yesterday, everything was so new new and different to the students that I was so glad I decided to do the STEAM activity first before the lesson. Today we read the story Misunderstood Shark and all of the students loved it! I love it anytime I can include a book as part of a lesson. It gives everyone a common experience/storyline to build from.
Our first lesson in our Digital Citizenship unit was about Identity and Use. We talked about how it is important to be a good person online and offline and how our actions can influence those of others and even hurt someone else's digital footprint. Much of the information I gathered was from Common Sense Media's Digital Citizenship Curriculum and I put a shark spin on it. I have to say, although I have been told that Digital Citizenship and sharks seems like an odd combination, it is working so far. Kids are actually engaged in the activities and it gives me a purpose in teaching them how to do things in Google Slides.
For the student activity today, I created digital LEGO pieces and students had to drag them into the workspace to "build" with them. I tasked them with designing a shark with the LEGO pieces, inserting a callout bubble, and then providing a piece of advice for being a good digital citizen in the callout bubble (they accessed this through Google Classroom so each student had a template to work from). There were so many new things that they had to do in this activity and everyone stepped up to the task! In 3rd grade we built our sharks out of physical LEGO pieces and then brainstormed pieces of advice and wrote them on the board because we were getting a little short on time. It worked out perfectly as a physical or digital activity!
This week we started back in person with students, so I thought I would start with something I feel is important for all students - Digital Citizenship! I feel that this is more important than ever as we are spending a large part of our day on the computer (even if we are in-person) and it is super important for students to recognize inappropriate online behavior and how to work towards addressing it.
As important as this topic is, I completely understand that it is not the most exciting topic for students. You can picture it now, in fact, almost HEAR it, "I know, I know," "This is so boring!" and the list could go on and on. Soooo, I knew I had to "fun it up" a bit in order for it to really hit home and leave an impact. I took a suggestion from the student evaluation from Camp Legend this summer chose a theme of sharks. I figured it would be a perfect topic to weave digital citizenship in, a variety of STEAM activities, and even some Science. STEAM Activity
As Specials at my school started the same day as in-person learning, I didn't want to jump full into full-blown content first thing in the morning. I figured it was not in the best interest of anyone! ;) So instead, I chose to lead into our Shark Digital Citizenship unit with a STEAM activity that I knew would spark their interest as well as give me an opportunity to get to know students a bit better.
I created a choice board based on the book, Smart About Sharks. There were so many great facts and images in this book, that I knew it would be a perfect anchor text for our Choice Board. I was gifted this book by an amazing person in my PLN from my Shark Week Digital Citizenship Amazon Wish List and am so grateful that it made this learning activity come to life! Students were given the Choice Board and could choose any item as their starting point. I had brief descriptions and visuals on the front and more details on the back if anyone wanted more information. The students seemed to enjoy the activity and actually worked through the items pretty quickly. It is amazing the difference in their work when they are not in groups and constantly talking and sharing while they are building. It was one of the things I was hoping to observe as far as their natural collaboration and communication and what would happen when they were not in groups and the natural sharing and conversation was not one of the main parts of their learning. I learned many things today!
As we have several classes that are full remote for the year, I have also been working to not only have the materials our in-person students will need, but also those that can be used by our virtual students. I created a digital version of the print choice board and provided students with some digital LEGO pieces to build and design. I hope that my virtual students have just as much fun as the in-person students with being able to create and learn about sharks!
This year is going to be different and I have accepted that. Today was the first day of school for me. We are starting out with 2 weeks of remote learning (teachers have to work from their classrooms) and then will phase in K-5, then 6-8, and finally 9-12. I feel this year everyone needs to give each other GRACE. We are all learning in this together and everyone's situation is different and unique. We can continue to put our children and student needs at the forefront of what we are doing as we have done every other year - this year it will most look different, and that is okay. We are all in this together and just like everything else has been with the global pandemic, we can continue to try our best to keep ourselves, our families, our students, and our students' families as safe and healthy as possible. Part of trying to be our best self is also admitting when things are not okay. And it is okay NOT to be okay! Being self-aware and keeping communication open with those close to us to help us get back to being okay is important (and clearly masked or unmasked, my anxiety about returning to school shows - and I am okay with that!). We will eventually find our new normals and settle in to doing what we love and what we are called to do as educators - teaching and learning.
A couple of weeks ago, I came across Elementary in the Mitten's Virtual Meet the Teacher video on YouTube. When I came across it, I had not received my teaching assignment/work duties for the year yet. As I found out last week, I will be teaching 3-5 STEAM in addition to my Technology Integration duties. It was a major stressor having to put together things quickly, but the Virtual Meet the Teacher video made it super easy to put together my own Virtual Meet the Teacher presentation. I used her presentation as a guide, but then made customizations for what I would like to share with students. You can take a look at my presentation below (some information removed for privacy reasons).
If you are unable to view the presentation below, please click here.
The activity I had the students complete was my take on Write On with Miss G's First Day of School Investigate the Teacher Activity - Print & Distance Learning and Bitmoji classrooms. Often as teachers our teacher desk is "our" space where students are not allowed to help themselves to whatever they want. In this case, I wanted students to "Raid My Desk" and look through everything that I have! I created a virtual desk in Google Slides that contained some things about me and some things that told something about me. I asked students to look through my desk and see if they could draw any conclusions about what they might know about me. I had them record their answers in a Google Form and then I asked some questions about them to get to know them. I am excited to see their answers as the week progresses and get to them a little bit personally!
Well, I had originally planned this lesson before we closed face-to-face classes for the year, but realized it was something that my STEAM students could easily do from home as well. Much like when we would do Maker Mats in class, I set this one up the same way, but added a bit of informational text to give more meaning to the Maker Mat (and explain a bit about Earth Day). I made a short video of me reading the informational text (in English) as I know it would be helpful to several of my students. After reading or listening to the text, students would choose at least 3 different items to create from the Maker Mat. They are always welcome to do more, especially as this will be completed at home and possibly with siblings. Below is a link to the Maker Mats. There are three different versions, but all the same content. One in English, one in Spanish, and one with both. Another fun resource I found that I shared with students is the song below. If you are unable to view the video below, please click here. This was a lesson that I had planned for my Y5 and T1 kiddos before schools were closed for face to face classes. I had everything created and ready to go, so I thought I would share my resources anyway! I was going to start out reading the book Trashy Town to the kiddos before starting our activity (I included a link to a read aloud below as well). I initially saw this activity on Instagram by @stemsational_stem and LOVED it! The goal for the students would be to create a trash and/or recycle bin that that will hold all of the provided trash or recyclable items. I created a printable that has items on one side and trash cans with numbers on the back (the numbering was honestly more for my sake in keeping materials separated!). This could still be done even without the printables - simply cut out pieces of paper and write or draw items on them or even wad up pieces of paper to make trash balls. Simply use whatever materials you have in the house - LEGOs, paper and tape, recyclable materials, or things you find in nature, etc. |
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