In the final problem, students are solving has a real world connection to the Fukushima nuclear power plant damaged during the 2011 tsunami. Students designed their own playing fields that required a third of it to be covered in "water"  and voted as a class for their favorite four designs to build out of colored paper. To be successful at solving this design problem,  teams needed to collect at least five colored cubes (nuclear waste) from the playing field in under two minutes.  Students worked with their team to design a robot that could collect the hazardous waste blocks and drop them into a collection zone while avoiding the water hazards in under two minutes. ​

Students have been following the design process to take what they've learned about vehicle safety, collisions and potential and kinetic energy to create a vehicle design that would protect an egg passenger in a collision. Students were very excited to finally test out their final designs with a real egg today in PLTW! Groups took turns placing their egg passenger into their vehicle and sending it down a ramp into a cement wall. Each group took a Slo-Pro video of their trial so they could watch back the collision and see what went well or and what they would like to improve about their design. There were so many great safety features on the designs based on what we have learned this module including seat belts, air bags, bumpers and additional weight from tires or additional wheels to prevent cars from tipping over. I was impressed with so many unique designs that followed the design criteria and constraints. Great job everyone!

Fourth graders continued to learn  about kinetic and potential energy  by building a basic egg cart. They released the egg cart from different heights on a ramp and collected data on how far the vehicle traveled from each of the different starting positions. Students discovered that more potential energy lead to a faster speed and a further distance traveled for their vehicles. Next students learned about two different types of collisions, elastic and inelastic. They then build a second cart and and had the opportunity to collide these two vehicles on a ramp from different heights to observe  different types of collisions created. In the last collision activity students added weight to their vehicles so they could observe how different size vehicles can change the types of collisions created. 

Fifth graders have successfully built their robot chassis and practiced navigating their robot with a controller. Their first robotic task to complete involved collecting three blocks in under two minutes on a playing field. Students had to work with their team to design a robot that could help them accomplish this task. They then had to run three trials to test their design. I so proud to report that all teams were successful at designing their robot to complete this task! One team even figured out a design that allow them to collect the blocks in only 15 seconds!

Third grade started their computer science module this week in Project Lead the Way. Students loved getting to revisit the game, Rosie's Run Time to review how to program and give step by step directions.

Next we learned about conditionals and functions in programming. Students then worked together to play a new game called Rosie's Path that required them to use repeat loops, conditionals and functions in their program to get Rosie home.

Next week students will learn how to use Hopscotch to code and create programs on their iPads!