STEM Lab 23_24 Round 7 - Wind Whipped Edition

STEM Lab year 9 is coming to a close, and we are definitely finishing on a high note. For kindergarten and 1st grade, this round was a chance to apply their programming skills to a multi-day project. Second grade planned and programmed their first project in the full version of Scratch. In third grade we explored the connections between the fine arts and creative coding. The 4th and 5th graders had their first experiences with text-based programming using the Python language. 

As I have begun thinking about the 10th anniversary of the Sinclair STEM Lab next year, I have also been thinking about how the lab got started. When the task of creating the lab was appointed to me, I was given an extraordinary amount of freedom in terms of lessons, projects, and content. It has been a great deal of work to develop a curriculum for 7 grade levels, and there has been a fair amount of trial and error over the years. Looking back at posts here from the early years of the lab what stands out most to me is how this space has evolved and grown. Credit for that development goes in large part to the students. It is thanks to their ideas, their enthusiasm, their creativity, and their feedback that the STEM Lab is the place it is today. 

Kindergarten & First Grade

I had a number of project ideas that I was considering for this final round, but ultimately my love of incorporating literature into computer programming won out. The students used Scratch Jr to create an animated retelling of a self-selected story. First, I read the class a book and modeled how they would create their story plan. We reviewed the elements of a story, including characters, setting, and plot. Then the students chose a story and created a plan. When the plans were finished, they began working on their projects in Scratch Jr. Most of them had to use the drawing tools to create the characters and settings for their stories. Next they programmed each scene using the broadcast commands to ensure the characters spoke in turn and that the scenes advanced automatically. I was really impressed with how well the students persevered through the challenges. 

Second Grade

In round 6 the second graders made the transition from Scratch Jr to the full version of Scratch. In that round each day was its own project. The students completed a different tutorial every day selected to give them time to practice with the most commonly used commands and structures of Scratch. In this round the students applied what they learned in round 6 to the planning and creation of a multi-day Scratch project with the theme "All About Me". In the final program when the letters of the student's name are clicked the letter changes its appearance and shares a piece of information about the student. First the students made a 3 column chart to plan what each letter would change into and what it would say about them. After that they went to work in Scratch. They wrote a script that set each letter in the correct place and with the correct appearance at the beginning of the program. Then they wrote the scripts that cause the letters to react when clicked. As with the K and 1st grade project, many students needed to draw their own sprites because the thing they wanted to change into is not one of the sprites preloaded into Scratch. 

Third Grade

One of the most important parts of the STEM Lab is making connections between the elements of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and subjects like language arts, literature, history, music, and visual art. (The siloing of subjects into individual, unrelated units is one of my greatest frustrations with the way so much of the modern school curriculum is done.)

For this unit, the 3rd graders explored the intersection of art and computer programming. As always we used Scratch. The music extension allows students to compose music, while the pen extension turns sprites into drawing tools that can be programmed to create images on the background. We started with a day of exploration for each extension. Students were provided with a brief step-by-step guide and some starter code that they were expected to tinker with until they had something original. Following that, students designed and programmed a project that included both the pen and the music extensions. I gave them a checklist with a few elements that had to be included (though these were deliberately open end to allow for individual student creativity), but they were encouraged to personalize their projects as much as possible. The studio including all the projects can be viewed here.

Fourth Grade

The 4th graders have done a fair bit of work this year building physical circuits and writing programs to control the behavior of those circuits. To wrap things up, the students were introduced to the Raspberry Pi computer. The Pi is about the size of a credit card, costs as little as $35, and was designed as a tool to make programming and physical computing accessible to all. 

We started the week building circuits with LEDs and buttons on a breadboard. For this step students powered their lights with batteries, so no programming was done. Their previous circuit building experience was evident as the students needed very little guidance to get the lights glowing. By the end of class most groups were asking for more LEDs and resistors and also wanting to know if I had larger breadboards they could use. 

The next day students started with a brief overview of the Raspberry Pi and how to connect their circuits to the input/output pins. The micro:bit used earlier this year has i/o pins as well, so the students all grasped this quite quickly. The Raspberry Pi includes a version of Scratch with a set of command blocks that can be used for physical computing. First the class used a diagram to build a simple LED circuit connected to the Pi. Next they built a short program to blink the LED at 1 second intervals. From there, the students bowled ahead adding LEDs to their circuits and additional commands to their code to create a dizzying variety of blinking patterns. The next day students continued working with their circuits, adding a button, and adapting the program to respond with blinky lights when the button was pressed. 

All of this was a lead-in to introducing the students to text-based programming. With the students feeling comfortable programming circuits in Scratch, I showed them a Python program side by side with a Scratch program with the same output: blinking an LED at 1 second intervals. We discussed which part of the Python code corresponded to the Scratch command blocks. Students returned to their computers with a packet of circuit diagrams and Python starter code. I was, as I often am, truly impressed with how quickly the students picked up on this new skill. Before long they were adapting the starter programs to blink more LEDs using more button inputs than I would have imagined.

Fifth Grade

The 5th graders finished their STEM lab careers with a full unit of text-based programming with Python on the aforementioned Raspberry Pi computer. They split their time between using the Python Turtle Art and Minecraft Pi Edition. The Turtle library is a set of tools for programming drawings and is also used to create games with Python. The Raspberry Pi used to include a version of the game Minecraft designed to be a virtual world students could manipulate with code. This feature is no longer available since Microsoft acquired Minecraft. Fortunately, it is still available to us because we are working with an older version of the Raspberry Pi operating system. As with the 4th graders, I gave the students a packet of sample programs to familiarize them with the basics, and then encouraged them to adapt, alter, and experiment with the programs to create their own unique outputs. They did not disappoint. Their screens were filled with kaleidoscopic Turtle drawings and Minecraft worlds awash in towering pixel art sculptures, lava waterfalls, and TNT produced craters. 

And then came the wind...

I had this final post about 70% written, just needing a few final notes and a few more pictures, when the storm blasted our campus. Suddenly I was back on my pandemic era cart pushing into other people's classrooms and trying to maintain at least some vague semblance of my plans. Mr. Zogg's 2nd grade class was moved to the lab and so to make room for them I was obliged to pack up the Raspberry Pi kits. Some of the projects described above I have been able to implement as planned for the most part. However, I have had to switch gears entirely for the 4th graders. The worst part has been missing out on seeing the last two 5th grade magnet groups and the awesome things I know they would have created with Python. 

It is too early to say at this point what the beginning of next year will look like. I am hopeful, and trying to be optimistic, that I will be housed in the STEM lab once more when August arrives. In a very real sense my class is the STEM Lab's physical space, and when I cannot have class there, some elements of the class are lost. (I would never have students engage the kinds of beautiful, creative chaos we get up to in the lab, with its attendant cardboard scraps and drippy glue, in another teacher's room.) Whatever the situation may be in August, we will meet it with perseverance, creativity, and playful, personally meaningful projects.

Have a wonderful, safe summer. 

STEM Lab 23_24 Round 6

As you have no doubt come to expect, the penultimate round of STEM lab for the year was awesome, just as its predecessors were. There was a great deal of programming going on this time. Kindergarten and 1st grade returned to their Code.org courses, while 2nd grade took their first steps in the full version of Scratch. The third graders had their first experiences coding the micro:bit microcontroller. Meanwhile, our 4th and 5th graders extended their micro:bit skills by incorporating the device into creative projects.

Kindergarten & 1st Grade

You may recall that the Kindergarten and 1st grade students begin the year in Code.org. The puzzle-based nature of the activities help the students develop their algorithmic thinking skills while also giving them valuable practice with programming concepts like loops and events. Most of the programming activities we do later in the year, such as Scratch Jr and Robo-mouse, have a more creative lean to them. I try to strike a balance between formal coding instruction and creative coding projects so that students not only learn the programming concepts, but also see programming as a tool they can use to express themselves and share their learning. This round was not all Code.org however, as we also did a day of Scratch Jr and completed a building challenge.

2nd Grade

The end of the year is always one of my favorite times with 2nd grade. That is when I introduce them to the full version of the Scratch programming language. Scratch was designed to have a "low floor", so even students who have not programmed before can get started with relative ease. Most of our students have been programming since Kindergarten and are very excited to start using "real" Scratch. I start each class with a code-a-long activity in which I show them some of the similarities and differences between Scratch and Scratch Jr. Following that guided tour, students have some time to explore the new coding environment and to try things out. They very quickly find that there is a lot more to Scratch than there was in Scratch Jr, and this discovery leads to some productive struggle as they work to understand how to create the movements, effects, and sounds they want for their projects. For the rest of the week students work through a set of tutorials embedded within Scratch that teaches them how to use the most common events and commands. I encourage them to put their own creative spins on the tutorials as they go. In rounds 7 the students will complete their first multi-day Scratch project and I cannot wait to see how they do.

3rd Grade

This round the 3rd grade was introduced to the wonderful world of microcontrollers with the BBC micro:bit. They learned that a microcontroller is the perfect device for when you need a computer that will only have one job, such as turning street lights on at night and off in the morning, or opening the doors at the grocery store as someone approaches them. The micro:bit has a number of inputs including buttons, an accelerometer, and sensors for light, sound, and temperature. All of these can be used to generate outputs like images or animations on the LED screen or sounds from the speaker. We spent the first few days of the week practicing with the various inputs and outputs. Thursday and Friday the students were challenged to build a model animal and to use the micro:bit to make their model interactive. The results of the Micro:pet project are always outstanding. Some groups used the device as their animal's mouth and others as its whole face. One group used animations on the micro:bit's screen as the tail of their model cat. 

4th Grade

Fourth grade used the micro:bit earlier in the year in a unit that was a kind of "next steps" continuation of the unit the 3rd graders did. They learned to use the micro:bit's input/output pins, more of the device's sensors, and generally created more complex programs. In this round the students used the micro:bit in conjunction with a breakout board kit called Crazy Circuits from Brown Dog Gadgets. The breakout board gives one easy access to the full array of pins on the micro:bit. The kit includes additional hardware like LEDs that students can connect and program. This is the first time we have used these kits in the lab so there was a bit of trail and error as we worked out the best ways to employ them. We worked it out though and at the end of the week the students used the a selection of Legos to build a scene from a story of their choosing which they then animated with the micro:bit and the breakout board components. While there was a bit of frustration at the limited Lego resources the students were given, that constraint by and large inspired creative work arounds.

5th Grade

In keeping with this round's micro:bit theme, 5th grade used a different breakout board and handful of components to create "moving masterpieces" or "animated artworks". We started the week by learning to wire LEDs and a servo motor to a breadboard. Most of the students used breadboards last year and were familiar enough with them to assist those who are new to Sinclair this year. Once the wires were all in place, students coded the LEDs to blink and the servo to rotate on a button press. They used this program as a starting point for their projects later in the week. I showed them one example project, my personal riff on Van Gogh's Sunflowers with a couple blinking LEDs and a moving butterfly, and then instructed the students to think of what they wanted to create. I made a few suggestions like book covers, scenes from movies, or some random silliness, but left the final decision to them. (I do not like to give the students too much direction for fear of stifling their creative process.) Over the next few days the students, some working independently, others with a partner created their image, mounted it to a file folder, added the LEDs, servo, and wires to the breadboard. They tweaked the original program to incorporate more LEDs or multiple servos, and to make the lights and motion fit with their vision. I was not disappointed with their work... so much impressive creativity!

STEM Lab 23_24 Round 2

I have been so busy being amazed by the incredible work the students are doing this round, I just realized that I had yet to write the blog post about it!

Kindergarten & First Grade

This round is one of my personal favorites, Math Stories. In this unit, each day starts with a picture book that centers on some kind of math concept. Some of the books tell stories, while others are more like counting books or math puzzles. Each grade level's books feature a variety of math topics including number sense, geometry, measurement, multiplication, and general problem solving. After the day's reading, students complete a hands-on activity related to the math concept covered in the book. Sometimes the activity is a bit like an art project, other times it is practice employing a particular tools or strategy. What I love about this unit is the chance to pair two subjects (math and literature) that students too often think of as related. 

Second Grade

This past summer I was fortunate to be able to travel with Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow to the high arctic archipelago of Svalbard. (You can read more about the particulars of that experience here and here.) This is the first project inspired and informed by my fellowship experience. I have done other iterations of this project before, but this time it was fully centered on the arctic. We started with a photo highlights tour of my time in the arctic. Then students chose one of the arctic animals from a list and researched it using the National Geographic Kids website. Part of the note taking process included drawing the animal and its habitat. Those drawings served as practice for the elements that were included in a Scratch Jr project about the selected animal. Students drew their animal's habitat and several versions of the animal. These drawings were photographed into a Scratch Jr project and coded to share information that students gathered from their research. This is one of the first projects students in the STEM lab complete that combines physical and digital elements and the results were amazing.

Third Grade

A perennial favorite in the lab is cardboard arcade, and this round saw 3rd grade get their chance with this project. Many of the current 3rd graders remember getting to visit the lab in 1st or 2nd grade to play cardboard arcade games and there were cheers from several students in each class when I announced the project for the week. We start by watching the short film Caine's Arcade for inspiration and discussion. Then students begin brainstorming and planning their games in their STEM lab journals. The middle of the week is spent building, testing, and making necessary adjustments to the design. At the end of the week finished products are presented to a visiting group of students from 1st grade along with administrators. These presentations are an important part of the design process in the lab. Sharing their work with an authentic audience gives the students a chance to practice talking about what they have created and what they have learned from the building process. The presentations also serve to inspire the younger students when they see the kinds of projects they will get to do as they progress through the STEM lab curriculum.

Fourth Grade

For the 4th graders, this round was the first half of a 2 part project. The end result will be an interactive biography programmed in Scratch and controlled with a physical display. Part 1 involves researching the life and important contributions of a well known artist or scientist. They had their choice of 11 different people as well as the choice of whether to work alone or with a partner. Once they had completed their research, students moved on to the Scratch project. The programs are run with key press events which will allow them to be controlled in part 2 with the Makey Makey and the physical display. Students had to find 3 relevant images and at least one map to include with their program. We had some great discussions about using images to illustrate the information being shared in the program. In round 2 the students will share their completed projects with a visiting class and administrators. 

The Scratch biographies can be found in this studio. (Some are still works in progress.)

Fifth Grade

Like 4th grade, the 5th graders started work on a two part project. This one is called Tiny Museum. The students conduct research on a chosen topic and use Scratch to create a virtual museum room with artifacts and images that share what they have learned. The project includes a narrator that serves as a digital tour guide to the exhibit they have put together. The topic choices I gave them were inspired by my aforementioned National Geographic fellowship. I wanted them to focus not just on the basic information about the topic, but also the impacts human activities are having on the arctic ecosystem. The second part of their project will have them building a physical model of their museum room and wiring a switch to the door that triggers the tour guide to start start speaking upon the door opening. 

Here is the studio of virtual museum rooms. (The projects at the top of the studio are very much works in progress because our 5th graders went to camp the last week of the round, so they only had 2 days to work on their programs.)

STEM Lab Round 4

Round 4 in the STEM lab has been truly wonderful! The students have done some amazing work and leanred so much. From programming robots to interactive posters to hacked works of art, I could hardly be more proud. Read on for a look at what we have been up to in the lab.

Kindergarten & 1st grade

Robo-Mouse returns! This is always a fun unit to teach in large part because of the excitement of the students. At this point in the year they have had a great deal of experience watching their programs run on a screen. The year started with Code.org coursework and was followed later with Scratch Jr. However, there is a special thrill to seeing one's code run in the physical world as the Robo-mouse moves through the mazes students constructed. 

In Kindergarten we start with a general introduction to handling the robot to keep it safe, and then we do a couple short programming exercises together so we can discuss the differences between this and our screen-based programming tools. Then students work in groups to create a maze for their robot and take turns coding it to the cheese. After this initial exploration time, students are given task cards with mazes to build and then program the mouse to navigate. The task cards describe long mazes requiring more complex programs to complete.

Most of the 1st graders remember using Robo-mouse last year, so we begin with a brief review and some exploration time in order for them to get reacquainted with the device. The rest of the week they work on a series of increasingly challenging task cards. They build the maze and, before getting their hands on a robot, they use the algorithm cards to plan their programs. This gives them the chance to develop their algorithmic thinking and to practice debugging as they identify the place in the program where things went wrong. Each day after they complete the task cards, students are allowed to design their own mazes and they delight in challenging themselves with the most difficult ones they can imagine. 

2nd grade

I have wanted to do a math stories unti with second grade for a while, but was not able to get a hold of the books I wanted to use. Thanks to the support of our awesome PTO, I was finally able to gather the desired books to bring math stories to second grade. Most of the books have a focus on building number sense and on operations like addition and multiplication, but we also touch on geometry. After reading and discussing each day's story, students work together on an activity related to the math found in the book. The activities are generally in the form of a number puzzle or problem solving activity. Students have to share their reasoning both with me and their classmates. I was so impressed by the rich discussions I heard students having with each other as I walked around the room. Our geomtry book, Perfect Square, lent itself to a more artistic project. Students decorated and dismantled a plain white square of paper to create a picture inspired by the story. The primary goal of the unit's activities is showing students that there are a variety of strategies, all equally valid that can result in solutions. 

3rd grade

In round 3 our third graders selected a science topic to research and then created Scratch project to share what they had learned. Round 4 started with an introduction to the Makey Makey I/O board. The name is an amalgam of "make" and "key" and stands for "make a key". It allows us to  use any conductive material to build switches and keys that can communicate with and control our programs. Students practiced setting up the Makey Makey and explored its capabilities with a set of plug and play apps including a piano, audio sampler, and etch-a-sketch drawing program.

Next, students created a poster that complemented their Scratch project. They added metal fasteners and copper foil tape to create touch points for the user to control the program. These were connected to the computer via Makey Makey, here acting as a USB keyboard. The Scratch programs they created use the space and arrow keys as events to run different parts of the code. The Makey Makey is precoded to those keys. Touching the "earth" point and one of the others at the same time closes a circuit that the board reads as a press of that key. The corresponding part ot the Scratch program runs as each point is touched. We wrapped up each week by sharing our work with a visiting first or second grade class. Everyone did a great job presenting! All of the Scratch projects are in this studio.

4th grade

This round was the beginning of a two part project centered on the state parks of Texas. The theme of the fourth grade curriculum is the history and geography of Texas, so this project is a natural tie in. Students explored different sites on the Texas Parks and Wildlife site. They were allowed to select any park that caught their interest to be the subject of their research. I gave them a series of guiding questions to help their notetaking that included identifyinig the region of Texas the their chosen park is in, the history of the park, and the plants and animals that can be found there. After gathering information, the students planned and began programming a digital tour guide for the park using Scratch. The most of the projects are in this studio, but many are works in progress because of the week's other activity. 

The fourth graders also participated in a Skype-a-Scientist meeting during this unit. Skype-a-Scientist has been part of many STEM lab units over the years. They partner classroom teachers with scientists working in a variety of fields. Students have tthe chance to have a conversation about a scientific topic with an expert and to learn about what it is like to work as a scientist. I requested ecologists for this particular round of meetings because one of the things I want to students to investigate about their park is the ecosystem it is a part of. Skype-a-Scientist took 2 days of the unit, one to learn background on ecology and our scientist's particular focus, and one day for the meeting. Each meeting is a bit different, but they are always interesting.

5th grade

This round's fifth grade project is one I have done in a few different iterations in recent years, and I look forward to it. I alternately refer to it as "Interactive Art" or "Hacked Art". Students select a painting from a famous artist from a collection I have put in a Google folder. Students are allowed to suggest a painting that is not one of the ones provided, but I do insist on approving it. The painting gets loaded into Scratch as a background first, and then as a sprite. Using the image tools, students erase all of the painting added as a sprite except for an element that they want to be interactive. They place this element against the background where it blends in. This sprite is coded to react to being clicked. This process is repeated several time until most of the painting has been made interactive. I always love seeing the creative outputs the students imagine into the paintings. Below are two standout projects (it was really hard to choose just 2). Click the green flag and then click the elements of the painting. Sound on to get the full effect. The complete hacked art studio is here. (Until 2/17/2023 the projects at the top of the studio are works in progress.)

Third Gets Unstuck in Scratch

 Last year I got the chance to participate in the creation and piloting of the Creative Computing Lab's Getting Unstuck Curriculum materials. The Creative Computing Lab is part of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and oversees a number of programs designed to support teachers and students in using Scratch. The Getting Unstuck materials grew out of a summer experience they organized for educators in 2018 and 2020. There are 10 modules, each with a variety of elements that help teachers plan for instruction and to guide students through the unit. One of the best things about the documents is how flexible they are. It is possible to pick and choose activities that are best for each particular group of students, and to fit the time available.

At the end of last year I introduced the second graders to Scratch. In a sense, they "graduated" from Scratch Jr, which they had been using since Kindergarten. They worked though several short projects that helped them become familiar with the interface and what it could be used for. I did not have them work in the online version of Scratch because of the distractions created by the ability to comment on projects and see inside other people's projects. This first unit of the year introduces the students to the Scratch online community, project sharing, and collaboration.

We started with a review the digital etiquette expectations and online safety guidelines. These have been part of every computer programming unit since these students were in Kindergarten, and I was pleased with how well they were able to recall them. Next students logged into Scratch for the first time. Once they were logged in, students have some time to explore and refamiliarize themselves with the coding environment. It has been amazing to see and hear their excitement as they create and share their work with others.

I selected the module on "parallelism" (2 or more things happening at once in a program) for this unit. It is an accessible concept for those students who are new to computer programming, and it has a lot of room for creative expression. We started by exploring some "inspiration projects" collected in a studio by the Getting Unstuck team. Students tried the projects, tinkered with code, and made observations about how they projects worked. This was also a chance for them to experience one of the most powerful features of Scratch, the ability to see the code behind someone else's project and to make changes to that code (without altering the original). It's a digital equivalent to taking your toys apart to see how they work without having to worry about putting them back together again.

Next students planned their own parallelism projects. The prompt reads: "Create a project that uses multiple green flag blocks to make things happen at the same time". I gave the students a planning page where they could write or draw their ideas. Then they got to work. So far, I have been impressed with how different the project ideas are. One of my goals in the lab is to give my students creative confidence. That is, I want them to feel safe to follow their own ideas and interests rather than looking around the room to see what others are making. 

Each day I introduced them to another element of Scratch and how I expected them to work in the community. They shared their projects to the studio. They completed the project page including instructions and a reflection. We discussed the importance of commenting one's code and the students added comments in their projects. The week ended with learning to leave helpful comments on other people's projects. For this we follow the Heart and Star model. A "heart" is a specific positive comment on project, something like "My favorite part of your project is...". A "star" is a suggestion for s fix or improvement. I stress to the students that the star is not necessarily a problem to fix (though it could be). A star could be a suggestion to add music or more challenging levels. It could also tell an easier way to accomplish something in the program. Each student commented on at least 2 projects in the studio.

There are a couple projects embedded below (just click the green flag to run them). The full studio of projects can be found here: 3rd grade parallelism.

What We Have Been Up To In the STEM Lab

 What a year it has been thus far in the STEM Lab. Despite my best intentions to keep up with this blog, the fast pace brought on by 1 week rotations (rather than 2 week), and the challenges of teaching both in person and virtual students simultaneously, defeated me.

We have been busy as usual in the lab (which is to say on a cart that I have been pushing around the school since October). Here's the short version of what has been going on with the STEM Lab.

Computer programming

As always, developing computer programming skills is an important element of our practice. Coding helps build critical problem solving and algorithmic thinking strategies. My approach in the lab places equal emphasis on instilling a sense of creative confidence in the students. I want them to thinking of programming not as an activity, but as a tool they can employ to share their learning and express their ideas. 

Kindergarten, first, and second grades have been using Code.org and Scrach Jr while the third through fifth graders have been using Scratch. 

Math Stories and Math Art Challenges

Kindergarten and first grade recently finished up an unit on math stories. Each day we read a book that combined literature and a math concept. Following the book students completed a an activity related to the book's theme. 

Earlier in the year, all of the students in Kindergarten through fifth grade enjoyed a unit of math art challenges. This unit was a playful exploration of the connections between mathematics and art. We looked at elements of geometry and probability along with patterns. Most of the math art challenges were adapted from a project maintained by Annie Perkins on her website: #MathArtChallenge. Many of these are geared towards middle and high school math students, but there are several that work for elementary students.

Skype-a-Scientist and Research Projects

One of my favorite additions to the STEM lab over the last couple of years is Skype-a-Scientist. This organization matches K-12 educators with scientists working in a variety of fields. This gives students the opportunity to have a conversation with (as many say) "a real live scientist". They learn about the diversity of careers paths in the sciences and see that science is open to people of all backgrounds. Over the years we have spoken with ecologists, biologists, paleontologists, speleologists, and more. We have met people from the USA, UK, Sweden, Germany, Portugal, and Brazil. 

I incorporate Skype-a-Scientist meetings as part of projects that have students researching and sharing their learning. This year so far all of second (learning about food webs) and third grade (coral reef ecology) have had scientist meetings. By the time spring break gets hear, fifth grade (cartography) will be part of that list as well. Going forward, fourth and first will have their turns.

Building

One activity that has fallen by the wayside during the pandemic is physical building and making. The projects cannot involve materials that are not common household items and for the in person students, they have to be simple enough that students can complete them independently. Then there was the issue of being on a cart and necessity that the materials be easy to move between classes.

Second grade is currently completing a project in which they are building 3D models of animals by combining 2D slotted cardboard pieces. The last day of the project has them mix up their pieces to create fantasy animals that they name and describe for science.

This has certainly been the strangest of school years. I am excited nonetheless about the projects I have planned for the rest of the year. Check back soon to see what we work on next.

Starting the Year in the Virtual STEM Lab

Now that the first 3 weeks of the strangest school year of my career are behind us, and we have settled into a rhythm of sorts, it seemed like a good time for the first blog post of the year.

The lab schedule and projects were created in order to minimize stress on families. Synchronous whole group meetings were set for Monday to introduce the projects and Friday to review and share. The projects varied by grade level of course, but the theme across the board was "plugged or unplugged". I wanted students and families to have a project choice that did not involve a computer because I am well aware of how much time the children are spending in front of the computer already.

The "plugged" option for my Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd graders had them working in their grade level Code.org courses. It was a bit different this year since the unplugged activities are a bit of a challenge to lead in a Teams meeting. The students who have chosen this activity have done a great job progressing through the lessons. I have been most impressed however with the quality of their responses to the reflection prompts. (These get submitted through our district LMS called the HUB.) It was great to see their excitement about successfully completing the puzzles at each level and to see them reflecting on what they had learned. So far my favorite response to "what is one thing you have learned this week?" is from a 1st grader who noted, "I learned that there is more than one way to do things". That is one of the key messages in the STEM Lab.

The 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders' "plugged" choice involved using the Scratch programming language to create a project. The 4th and 5th graders are familiar with Scratch for the most part and I challenged them to create an animated book review project. The 3rd graders missed out on their traditional introduction to Scratch at the end of second grade, so they are mostly new to the platform (though most have experience with Scratch Jr). Their task was to create a project that introduced themselves to others. In both cases I provided examples, but encouraged the students to be as creative as they wished with the form their projects took. I have not been disappointed so far. The 3rd graders are doing an amazing job of problem solving their way through this new programming environment, and the 4th and 5th graders are extending their skills through some playful experimentation.

The "unplugged" activity was the same for everyone, Kindergarten through 5th grade. The challenge was to use whatever materials they have around to build a 3 dimensional model of a favorite book cover. I showed the students a few examples, but again, they were encouraged to be as creative as possible. The only rule was no 2D products. I have gotten so many amazing projects back so far. This building project has proven to be a bit more of a popular choice than the coding project. I am not terribly surprised by this because when I told the classes in our meetings that they had a non-computer choice there were many looks of relief.

 

As I mentioned above, there is a reflection piece to these choices. The prompts vary by grade level a bit, but are all aimed at getting students to reflect on what they learned, the quality of their work, and to think about how they might improve their projects in a second iteration. One of my favorite prompts is the one that asks students to choose 3 adjectives to describe their work. Some responses I have enjoyed from a variety of students include "challenging", "surprising", "awesome", and "breakable".

We have a few weeks left of fully digital learning. Beyond that point there are many unknowns. But whatever may come, I have loved seeing the students' work, and I know that we will find a way to continue making together.

Getting Unstuck 2020

This has not been the summer that I imagined. I know that holds true for everyone, teachers, students, and parents alike. The ongoing uncertainty regarding the coming school year has been challenging to manage, and has become more so as June has become July, and July slides relentlessly towards August. The current state of affairs has created a paucity of things to get excited about. There are no trips to take, no conferences to go to, no gatherings to attend.

Enter the Scratch Ed Team from the Harvard Graduate School of Education with Getting Unstuck. The Scratch Ed Team works to support teachers with incorporating creative computer programming experiences into their classrooms using the Scratch Programming Language. The Creative Computing Curriculum Guide shares ideas and strategies meant to be adaptable to any computing classroom, afters school club, and other educational spaces. This guide is paired with the Getting Unstuck strategies that offer ways for educators to support their students with problem solving their way through a creative project. Together they help answer the questions, "how can I engage my students in creative computing? and, "what do we do when we get stuck?". These resources are open source, available to all, for free. 

The Getting Unstuck summer learning experience was designed for educators, formal and informal, to connect and support each other through creative Scratch projects. Each week day, from July 6 through July 17 participants received an email containing an open ended programming prompt. There was a link to a studio for people to share their projects in. The studio serves not just a as a warehouse for projects, but as a place for people to draw inspiration, learn how to do things, ask questions, and to gather and offer feedback to each other through the comments feature of Scratch. In addition to the communication tools in Scratch, there was a Twitter hashtag (#GettingUnstuck) to follow and a Facebook group where participants could interact to work out bugs and share tips. Finally, there were two live video meetups for people to gather live to talk about their projects, teaching, learning, and anything else that came up.

I have long felt that the best professional development is teachers talking to other teachers. The Getting Unstuck experience is the best example of this kind of learning. Over the course of this 2 weeks I connected with many dozens of educators from around the world. I saw hundreds upon hundreds of inspiring Scratch projects. I learned new ways to use Scratch, explored elements of the language I am unfamiliar with, and collected inspirations for student projects to last me many years. 

I had the great pleasure to serve as a facilitator for Getting Unstuck. As such, I spent many joyful hours checking out projects in the studios each day helping participants debug their programs, offering tips and encouragement in the comments, and feverishly taking notes in support of my own learning. During the two video meetups I acted as one of the breakout room small group facilitators. Getting Unstuck would certainly have been the highlight of my quarantine professional development schedule on its own. Getting to work alongside Karen and Paulina from HGSE, and Kimberly and Susan, both teachers with a wealth of experience teaching with Scratch, made the experience not just inspiring, but transformative. Heretofore it has been tough to muster much excitement about planning for the new school year given that so much of how it will go remains a colossal question mark. Now, at the conclusion of two weeks of intense making, learning, and connecting, I have finally found the energy and the sense of purpose I need to start crafting my lessons. 

 

Today's live meetup ended with each of the 50+ participants individually unmuting themselves and sharing one word for how they are feeling here at the end of our Getting Unstuck adventure. Inspired, grateful, creative, empowered, and joyful were just some of the words given. I am feeling all of those.

My words cannot fully express how grateful I am to everyone who participated in Getting Unstuck 2020. The energy and inspiration I have received from this community will sustain me through the many challenges that lie ahead. 

My personal Getting Unstuck studio.

Each day's Getting Unstuck studio with everyone's projects linked from this page.

Two for One Blog Post - Interactive Posters and Math Stories

The run up to the winter break is is always a busy time. Mine was even busier than usual and the first casualty was my blog posting schedule. So this one will wrap up the work done by the kindergarten, first, and third graders during cycle 2. Then I'll be all ready to go when cycle 3 starts in another week.

Third graders got their first taste of true digital making during this rotation with the interactive posters project. Each class had a different set of research topics to choose from. I try to do this with all of my groups and grade levels. It gives me the chance to see how well various topics work for a particular project. Also, speaking for myself, I like to have some variety in the projects over the course of the unit since I am implementing the same lesson plan 4 times in a row as the classes rotate through the lab. The choices ranged from recycling and energy conservation to birds and fish to objects in our solar system.

Students had the option to work independently or with a partner. They researched their chosen topic and recorded notes in their journals. They then planned a Scratch project to teach about their topic. The plans needed to include backgrounds and sprites they would use, what facts from their research went with each background, and how the sprites would move and talk. I introduced the students to computer programming vocabulary like "event" and "comment". Events are a key part of how their programs for this project operate and commenting one's code is a good habit to get into and one I have been lax in training my students in acquiring. The students also learned how to add pictures from other sources to their Scratch projects. An important part of this is finding pictures that are open source and giving proper attribution in the project notes.

Teams start on the Scratch project together so that both partners are familiar with the basics of its function. After a day or two one partner steps aside and begins work on a poster that complements the Scratch project. When the poster and program are complete, brass fasteners and copper foil tape are added to the poster to create touch points that can be used as key press events to run the various parts of the Scratch program. Turning these conductive materials into "buttons" is achieved by using the Makey Makey input/output board. It is essentially a keyboard connected to the computer via USB without any keys. Wires with alligator clips connect the poster to the Makey Makey which, once plugged into the computer, allows the brass fasteners on the poster to function as key presses when touched.

One of the things I have come to love most about teaching in the STEM lab over the last 5 years is the pure excitement and wonder that students express the first time they try out something made interactive with the Makey Makey.

I wrote a guide to this interactive poster activity that can be found here on Instructables.

Kindergarten and first grade had a unit that centered on math and literacy. Each day we read a story in which some kind of mathematics is involved, different books for each grade level, and then worked on an activity related to the math concept from the book. The books vary a little from one class to the next. Partly that is because of the various interruptions like fire drills and holidays that occur, and partly it is because I do not own a copy of all of the books I would like and have to request them from the public library. Regardless of the books read, the math concepts covered are generally the same. We touch on things like doubling and skip counting. We look at strategies for decomposing and grouping numbers. There is always some measurement and some geometry as well.

I have done some form of this unit for the last few years in the lab and it is always one of my favorites. This unit was born out of my realization that after a couple of year out of the regular classroom I missed teaching literacy, and more specifically books, to my students. My two week units do not allow me to teach novels like I used to, but this unit gives me the chance to read with students again. More importantly, I get to make clear to them the connections between mathematics and literacy that I fear they miss during their classroom reading block.