Kindergarten students continued partner engineering work last week with marshmallow and toothpick structures. Though much trial and error, we discovered the marshmallows were much too fragile. They crumbled and did not hold the weight of our hands when we applied any amount of downward force. We returned to step 5 of our STEM inquiry process multiple times as we revised blueprints and improved our designs.
We also invited the 2nd graders to our class to help us problem-solve our marshmallow and toothpick structures. They confirmed our hypotheses--marshmallows are not the ideal building structure.
While in the midst of our engineering work this week, our classroom was infiltrated by a mischievous elf! Initially, he was bent on messing up our room. We used our iPads to take pictures of evidence of his misdoings and also conducted some research on suitable traps that would withstand the force of an energetic elf.
We decided to use our marshmallow structures to trap him overnight early in the week. We discovered he was nocturnal and had a penchant for sweets--especially candy canes.
Our structures were almost exclusively made of squares and rectangles. After testing out multiple designs...and receiving some clues from one of the elf's daily notes, we learned that triangles are much more resilient. Thanks to the elf who supplied us with a few clues, some research, and a bag of new materials, we went back to our drawing board and created structures made with gum drops in the shape of pyramids. This was the key to success and we met his challenge to cooperatively build a trap that measured more than 10 cubes in height!
Hooray for our enthusiastic and persistent engineers and one little elf who learned how to be kind in kindergarten!
All elementary students (K-6) caroling in the community today!!
Flannel Day and Holiday Sweater Day!!
Wednesday and Thursday next week :)
Creativity flowing in Art class!
The Floodwood SH Band performed for a large crowd of shoppers Tuesday at the Holiday Music Festival at the Mall of America. They did an outstanding job for the holiday shoppers of the twin cities area!! Join us for the same concert on Thursday, December 20th at Floodwood Schools!
The 9th grade enjoying a pizza party after winning the lip-sync contest at Homecoming! Way to go 9th grade!
Itasca Public Health will be offering the flu shot to students (& staff) on Monday, December 17th at 9:30AM at Floodwood School. Watch for a permission slip to come home with your student. Contact Sarah Marshall, School Nurse with any questions: smarshall@isd698.org
STEM Structures with Flat and Solid Shapes: Kindergarten students spent the week planning, testing out, and redesigning a series of structures with flat and solid geometric shapes. On Friday, students worked through this scientific process to visualize effective structures based upon their previous learning, properly identify flat and solid shapes, and collaborate with their team members. Many structures collapsed, yet these engineers persevered and revised their designs to construct sturdier models!
Generations of Generosity! The kindergarten and 6th grade classes worked alongside a host of high school students, parents, staff, and community members this morning and put generosity in action in a BIG way.
Teams were hard at work all morning creating a beautiful variety of holiday treats that will be given as gifts during our upcoming Christmas caroling event. What a sweet way to bring generations of people together for a common goal!
Many hands make light work on a sweet surprise for the community!
Please plan on supporting the 5th and 6th grade class Laurentian Fundraiser Basket Raffle at the winter program December 20th at 6 pm. Purchase tickets for $1 each. Donations toward the trip will also be accepted. We appreciate the support.
Junior high band students getting ready for the Holiday Concert. Join us Thursday, December 20th at 6:00 pm in the gym.
Floodwood School is seeking a SUBSTITUTE VAN DRIVER to transport students with school van. Route times vary from 30 to 75 minutes. $25.72 per route ($51.44 if do both AM and PM routes in one day). A valid driver’s license, a clean driving and background check required.
Any temperature greater than 100 degrees F is considered a fever. Children must be fever-free for 24 hours without the use of fever reducing medications (such as Tylenol, Motrin, Advil, etc.) in order to return to school. This applies even if the underlying cause of the fever is non-infectious, such as middle ear infections, etc. Children with a fever do not usually feel well enough to participate and attend school activities. It is recommended that they be given 24 hours to recover from the fever before returning to school. Please note that a child who exhibits symptoms of illness without a fever may be sent home if the nurse feels this is in the best interest of the child or the child’s classmates (with compromised immune systems)
8th graders using the floor and their bodies to graph linear equations.
Floodwood School library hosted 2 author visits.
Floodwood Students had the opportunity to ask these authors about their writing styles, inspirations, and what it takes to be published. This was made possible by Ms. Davidson's attendance at the MN ITEM conference in October.
If you'd like to import the game schedule into your own personal Google Calendar use the following steps:
Go to Settings; Add Calendar; pick from URL and put the sports URL in there
STEM Challenges with 3D Structures: Over the course of last week, kindergarten students explored STEM concepts beyond the kitchen and focused on constructing 3D shapes from a specific set of materials--playdough spheres and cylinder coffee stir sticks.
The question I posed was this: Can you construct a tower that is at least 10 counting cubes tall, is free-standing (stands without any help from our hands), and uses playdough spheres (balls) and sticks?
Students got right to work visualizing their construction and making plans for creation. They shared materials, problem-solved with peers, analyzed their constructions, built, measured, and rebuilt. This initial activity was extremely challenging and intentionally designed to get students to struggle through the process and begin to discover which 3D designs were most effective.
This week, we will delve further into the scientific process of inquiry. We will discuss our questions/problems, experiment with a variety of building materials, visualize and plan solutions, construct a free-standing 3D structure, analyze results, and revisit our designs to improve stability and effectiveness.
Last week's initial work with structure buildings and our discoveries involving the strongest, most effective 3D shapes will equip us with the background knowledge we need for this STEM challenge of the week. Stay tuned for our discoveries in the days to come!
Growing Generous Learners: The Fruits of Our Labor:
Throughout the week, we read and reread variations of the folktale, Stone Soup. We learned about generosity and how contributions (no matter their size) collectively make BIG results!
This theme was applied to a special Alphabet Stone Soup project we completed on Thursday. Students helped me think of possible foods to correlate with each letter and foods were assigned to each member of our group last week. The letters Q and X were especially challenging and required a little research on my part!
This week, each student contributed one or two small ingredients for our own "Stone" soup. Every contribution aligned with a letter of the alphabet and were stored on our Alphabet Stone Soup pantry shelf on Thursday morning. With the help of a classroom mom, small groups of students worked through the process of preparing a feast to share with our little classroom community.
Students washed, sliced, poured, measured, mixed, added, and stirred our crock pot creation. There was such an abundance of ingredients that we even hand enough leftovers to create another entire crock pot of soup.
We created invitations to deliver to staff members, high school assistants, and parents to share in our feast that afternoon. We had several folks visit us and enjoy our bounty of delicious soup, rolls, and "stone" chocolate candies given to us by one of our favorite classroom paras! It was an amazing day that made such a huge impact on our understanding of the theme of generosity. When we share, the results are always incredible...AND delicious.
Growing Big Learners from a Strong STEM:
This week, kindergarten students used the scientific process of inquiry to design and improve a design for grilled cheese sandwiches. Students followed the process of questioning, making hypotheses, planning, creating, and redesigning a meal requiring multi-step directions. It was rigorous work over the course of two days!
On Monday, we wondered how the shape of our cheese topping (circles cut from string cheese or "rectangles" pulled from the cheese stick) would impact the sandwich. Which process of topping our cheese sandwiches would melt easier and taste better? We made predictions, created our product (on "double bubble" rolls mimicking our Venn diagram/double bubbles used for compare/contrast activities), analyzed our finished product, and discussed possible redesigns. The sandwiches were pretty good, but we felt we could improve our designs and learn from our mistakes.
On Tuesday, we revisited the process of inquiry and discussed our conclusions--the "rectangle" cheese we pulled from the string cheese was better because it was thinner and covered more area of our rolls. However, students also concluded our "double bubble" rolls were too thick (like our string cheese circles were too thick!) and we needed to redesign our sandwiches with thinner bread.
Our math standard with learning scale and learning targets for the week involved comparing and contrasting shapes, according to the attributes of these shapes. While our main focus was on attributes such as lines, corners/points, and sides, students made connections to other measurable attributes such as thickness within this authentic cooking context!
We visualized and then made blueprints of an improved sandwich with "square" bread and recreated the ideal sandwich--square bread with rectangular cheese. This was an opportune time (again, within a meaningful context) to analyze the similarities/differences between these two shapes within a relevant context. We concluded this design was the best by far. The cheese melted uniformly and the bread was perfectly crisp! This two-day process aligned directly to the content areas of STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Bravo, STEM scientists!
