Oil Spill Engineering Challenge

In conjunction with our Interdependence Within an Ecosystem unit, we are following the Engineering Design Process (EDP) through a realistic problem.  Our problem is (pretend) there was an oil spill in the Winooski and/or Lamoille Rivers.  How are we (acting as Environmental Engineers) going to clean it up?  Using our iSTEAM time, we have learned about the ecosystems of both rivers and have moved through the Ask and Imagine portions of the EDP.  Today, we learned that a boom is something that engineers use to contain an oil spill.  We tried out yarn and rubber bands as 2 possible booms in a “river” that had an oil spill to see how those materials worked.  Here’s some of our charts and observations:

How does erosion work?

Our science investigation today helped students figure out what erosion is and what it does.  As mentioned previously, we planted some grass in 2L bottles.  We also made 2L bottles that looked like the river bank near our school and some with just dirt.  We made it “rain” and collected the run-off to compare what the different ground cover (or lack thereof) did to protect the soil.  When we came back in, we drew models to help us continue to Make Meaning of our investigation on Monday.

Jaguars help Musketeers

During iSTEAM this afternoon, some of the Jacobs’ Jazzy Jaguars came in to help us launch SeeSaw.  It was amazing to see third graders explain to their peers how to maneuver new technology and how much more closely the peers listened to their help and directions.  Within 30 minutes, each student in my class was able to do a practice video, drawing, or note both for fun and with some academic subject.  Parents, be on the look out for our first official piece coming your way…. Thank you Jaguars!

2 Special Guests

Wow!  Today was a great day!  This morning, guest reader, Katie from St. Mike’s softball team read us a story for World Read Aloud day.  Then, surprisingly, this afternoon, a squirrel treated us to his antics of trying to get to the food in one of the bird feeders outside the classroom.  The children were mesmerized!  It’s too bad no one picked squirrels for their animal report.