Grade 6 designing LEGOS with @Autodesk123D in math with @KKleinNYC. #mathchat #STEAM

Katie Klein (@KKleinNYC) and Jazmin Sherwood’s 6th grade math students are designing LEGOS in this third or fourth iteration of a project that we prototype and revamp each year. In the past, we’ve used a class account on Tinkercad to construct our 3-D shape, and this year students are working with Autodesk’s 123D Design (@Autodesk123D). Tinkercad is part of Autodesk’s 123D family of free apps for 3D scanning, designing, and slicing  apps and software.

In our math project, students solve for the surface area and volume of a one-bump LEGO. Time allowing, they also engineer either a larger traditionally shaped LEGO brick or design a LEGO that isn’t part of a set yet. We are ever grateful to Jeremy Sambuca of The Hewitt School for opening my eyes to this project years ago during a presentation at the now-closed Makerbot store in SoHo.

Here’s the updated lesson plan Katie shared with the children today:

6th grade #DigitalCitizenship lesson in #LifeSkills with @DenaeMSisco:

Below are the slides Denae Sisco (@DenaeMSisco) used to introduce a quick unit on Digital Citizenship. Sometimes, I like to drop the “digital” and just call this a Citizenship unit to reinforce that we should be good citizens online and offline…

After discussing the content of the slides and answering questions as they arose, students were split into groups of three and assigned a social media site to explore: Facebook , Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, YouTube, Wikipedia, Oovoo, Google+, kik, ask.fm. The groups were tasked with reading their site’s Terms of Service and answering the following questions into a shared Google Spreadsheet (see below for a screenshot):

• How old do you need to be in order to use this site/app?
• How can you use this site in positive ways?
• What are some concerns about this site (either your concerns or the site’s policies)?
• Who owns the content?
• Can you adjust the privacy settings?
• How would you contact the site to ask questions or express concerns?
• What are some actions that would cause profiles to be deleted or blocked?

Building water rocket launchers with @bendickraikes in 6th science at @The_School

@BenedickRaikes is the 6th grade science teacher at The School at Columbia University and an extraordinary colleague. He was inspired to build water rocket launchers this semester. In preparation for that, he purchased a book, Make: Rockets, and a Water Rocket Launcher kit from Maker Shed. (Update: these kits do not seem to be currently available…)

After assembling the kit’s prototype, Ben felt much better about asking 6th graders to build their own water rocket launchers as well. We purchased all of the parts using the supplies list from the book (also on the DIY project website). Most of the materials came from Lowe’s, and this process was made substantially easier as the book includes all of the parts numbers. Other bits and bobs were sourced from Amazon and the neighborhood hardware store.

Ben and I thought it would be fun if the students were to “place an order” at Lowe’s for the materials, so we shared the shopping list with them. Students were tasked with filling out a spreadsheet in math class that included space for them to insert an image of each part and an area for them to tally the cost of the project. See below:

This week, 6th graders assembled their water rocket launchers using plans from Make Magazine: http://makezine.com/projects/water-rocket-launcher Students were divided into 4 groups of about 4-5 students. Each group had a faculty mentor at their table — 6th Grade Math Teacher Catherine Hildebrandt (@KKleinNYC), Math Associate Jazmin Sherwood, Intermediate Division Principal Kevin Fittinghoff, and me — which left Ben to float from group to group offering help and guidance. We had to saw PVC and wood, join pieces with epoxy or PVC primer and cement, assemble materials, work with drills, screwdrivers, utility knives, pliers, clamps, and more.

After two days of constructing rocket launchers, students were asked to fill out a self-reflection feedback sheet with the following questions:

1. Did you enjoy the rocket launcher building project? Give reasons.
2. What was your favorite part of the project?
3. What did you find difficult or challenging?
4. Did you learn anything new doing this activity?
5. What are your thoughts about working in a group of 4 or 5 children?
6. Would you be interested in doing a project like this again? What would you chose to build? (Realistic suggestions only please!)

Tomorrow students will have a soft launch (pun intended!) of their rockets. On Monday, the grade will gather together in the park for the official launch and to compare results.

After seeing my tweet about our project, Chris Casal (@Mr_Casal) shared a link to a wonderful video highlighting the work of Christine Boyer (@5boyer) and her 5th graders who launched rockets last year. Christine also provided a wonderful documentation of the project here, and she recently presented her class’s work at the National Science Teachers Assocation‘s annual conference!

LIFTOFF TO LEARNING from Ralph King, Hawkview Pictures on Vimeo.

 

 

Making 3D structures in SketchUp and measuring surface area in 6th math

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I’m working with Catherine Hildebrandt on an activity that incorporates 3D printing into a 6th grade Geometry unit.

Catherine and her 6th graders were examining polygons, prisms, cylinders, spheres, surface area, and volume anyway. So, we thought we’d have kids design shapes, measure surface area and volume, and print out their creations on our Makerbot and Bits From Bytes 3D printers to pass around for their classmates to measure.

Catherine chose to use Google Sketchup for this project, as it is easy to construct an infinite out of shapes using the tool, and it is super easy to set the measurements/distance for lengths in the bottom right toolbox of the SketchUp window. I’d initially suggested Tinkercad, but for this project, I deferred to Catherine’s preference (especially after she spent quality time trying out each program).