Year 4, Session 5, Week 4
We can’t believe it is already February! Session 5 is flying by and our heroes are on a journey to slay the “physics” dragon. It has been a week full of hands-on learning through constructing machines and testing them out.
During quest time this week, the Elementary Studio explored pulleys, levers, and marble runs! They are working on building a compound machine where a pulley activates a lever and launches a projectile. Eventually the goal is to get the pulley/lever combination to launch the marble into their marble run. Their creativity is shining as they design, test and modify all of these machines themselves!
In Writer’s Workshop the learners discovered the difference between revising vs. editing. Next, they began the peer revision process using warm and cool feedback. Warm feedback is when you highlight something the author did well and cool feedback is something you feel can be improved.
Our art project this week was an ornament depicting each learner’s hero’s journey! They drew their own creative interpretation of them on their quest to be a hero and then we sized the picture down to paste it onto an ornament. The original copies are hanging in the windows of our studio and they were able to bring the ornaments home.
In civilization we had socratic discussion about the beginning of Christianity and the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor Nero. Our discussions were very lively this week with opinions divided and sides being switched. The learners even continued their discussion during lunch time for fun! It’s hard to believe we only have three more civilization chapters for the year.
During DEAR on Monday, our older heroes read stories to the younger heroes. They did an excellent job of reading in an engaging way using different voices for the characters!
Will’s birthday was on baking day so the Little Heroes baked him a birthday cake! They took turns cracking the eggs, pouring in the other ingredients, and mixing the batter. When it was finished they decorated it with sprinkles!
We continued team building this week with a paper airplane contest! The ES heroes designed their own paper airplane and then tested to see which flew the furthest. Based on the one that went the greatest distance they were challenged to create another airplane as a group that would go even further. They successfully completed the challenge!
Check out a few photos of our learners working hard on core skills: