Coded Messages
4/28/2018
Students have been busy creating their choose your own adventure stories for the past week. These stories integrate real historical events from the time of the American Revolution. Each students chose to write from the perspective of someone from that time period. They could choose to write from the perspective of a patriot colonist, a loyalist colonist, a slave, or a Native American. Students present the reader with choices along the way that the character can make. The reader makes the choice and the story continues based on the choice.
The stories are being created in a software called Twine from twinery.org. This program allows students to create nonlinear stories. Each scenario links to other scenarios in a form that looks something like a family tree. When the story is done, it can be exported into html and can be played like a game. The choices that the reader makes is highlighted as a link, and when a link is clicked, the screen changes to the next scene. Students are learning basic html coding through this project. This coding language is the same used on many websites. This project introduces students to coding and helps them to see that it's not as daunting as they may assume. We will be having a parent snack on the week after next to allow parents to experience these stories. Look for details in the latest email I've sent out. Putting on the Finishing Touches
4/20/2018
This week, students focused heavily on two project based learning units. The first unit is a social studies unit focused on the American Revolution. Students are creating "choose your own adventure" stories based on the events of the American Revolution. The project allows students to create alternate histories to show how differently history could have worked out. Not only is this activity important for understanding history, but it helps students understand how even small actions in their own lives can have substantial impacts on the world. The second project based learning unit is focused on science. We have been studying space, and our project will be auctioned off at PNA's annual auction this Saturday. Look for a game called Space Race and please bid on it! Students put a lot of work into it, and it turned out really well! In the pictures below, students are painting the 3D printed game pieces. We moved our classroom outside to take advantage of the nice spring weather. Look at the concentration! You can see the little ships on the cardboard before being painted.
Space Race!
4/15/2018
The annual auction is coming up fast. Next Saturday parents, alumni parents, and other community members will join together to support and celebrate the mission of Pacific Northern Academy. Every year each classroom creates a project with the involvement of students. These projects are then auctioned off, either in the silent auction or the live auction. This year, 5th grade has collaboratively created something really cool... a board game! At PNA, we believe that learning with a purpose, beyond just getting a good score, is vital to maximizing student achievement, retention, engagement, curiosity, and academic enthusiasm. Project-based learning is one of the primary methodologies we utilize in order to achieve this sense of purpose. For our PBL project for our space unit, we planned, designed and created all of the elements of a board game, except the board (created in Photoshop by me), the board pieces (created with a 3D printer by Finn's grandpa), and the board case (Created by PNA parents Charmaine Ng and her husband Johan). Students created what we are calling "entropy cards" that each feature a different celestial object. Each card includes a description of the object as well as something that happens to you in the game that has some connection to the celestial object. We start every unit by filling our PBL project board. This includes a section where students can indicated what they already know, what they need to know in order to successfully complete the project, and a place for any random burning questions that we can explore that relates in some way to the overall topic. Feel free to drop by the classroom to check out what the students have put up. Below is the gameboard that I created with input from the students. This should be a fun game, but you'll have to bid on it at the auction to get your own copy! Morning Meeting MusicHow Big is the Solar System?
4/6/2018
Students have been busy learning about space for the past couple of weeks. Our PBL project for this unit is a complete board game that is loosely based on the Game of Life. I plan to share more details about this project in a future blog once the project is done, but I can tell you it is turning out great. The game is called Space Race, and players navigate through a variety of cosmic obstacles and circumstances in order to make it to the end of the race. Students are really finding our PBL project to be incredibly motivating. This project is not only our PBL project, but it is also our class auction project. It will come with a hand-crafted wood case, game markers created in a 3D printer (with assistance from a student), and all of the cards and rules written and designed by students. You can look forward to seeing that at the auction. In order to help students comprehend the varied distances between the planets, we constructed model of the solar system with the planets spaced to scale. We converted astronomical united to inches/feet. The golf ball is Mercury, which of course is the first planet from the sun. For those who may be a little rusty, next comes Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and then we also included Pluto, despite the fact it has been downgraded to a dwarf planet. The student in black in the distance is standing by Pluto. Students are pointing to the planet that they were personally responsible for. During testing week, we followed our popular tradition of playing games in the gym for 20 minutes before beginning testing. We played a variety of games including Salmon/Bear/Mosquito, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Line Tag. Kids seems to really enjoy having a chance to play with the older kids. Below is a picture of students playing Salmon/Bear/Mosquito. This game works like Rock/Paper/Scissors, where each group of students picks one of the things to be and then runs and tries to tag members of the other team if their character is dominant. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and worked well to get their wiggles out and give them a positive attitude for testing.
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Elizabeth FerryMs. Ferry's experiences include teaching with the Peace Corps in Tanzania, teaching high school English in Maine, and this is her second year at PNA. She loves moose, outdoor activities, and being with her students. Archives
April 2021
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