Summer SAVY 2017, Session 1/Day 4- Dive into Design (Rising 1st)

Posted by morganr1 on Thursday, June 15, 2017 in SAVY.

Dear Parents,
Today was a fabulous fourth day for our Dive into Design class! We began our morning by reading a book called What do you do With a Problem? From there, students did a warm-up problem/solution where they were told to imagine that their furniture is made out of marshmallows. Students were asked to come up with at least 3 problems this would present. Then, they went through the same scenario with graham crackers for furniture. Finally, students were asked what food would be the best material to make furniture out of. Students thought of great ideas for the best food material, including carrots, and meat on bones!
Next, students gave feedback on our pool builder question from last night’s dinner discussion regarding how builders can find the total length needed for pipes in the pool when the plans call for numerous twists and turns in the design. This problem called for some deep thinking! From this problem, I moved to a lesson on how objects that are not in a straight line (zig-zag, etc.) can be measured by imagining how the objects can be imagined as straight lines. We talked about right angles (90 degrees), zero point, end point, and line segments. After the lesson students partnered up and did a practice activity with straws where they created zig-zag pathways with right angles in two different sets (10 straws in each set). Students had to count the line segments in each pathway, and realized that objects that are the same length can have different shapes, directions and pathways.
Finally, students worked on their pool models. Tomorrow students will put on finishing touches and will record measurements of different objects in the model, including perimeter (they will learn about this tomorrow since we were not able to discuss this concept today), length, width, height and depth. Tomorrow is the parent Open House! We are excited to show you what we have been learning and working on! The Open House is between 9:15-9:45 in our classroom, Murray-Floor 1. We do have more work to do after the Open House, so I do hope all students will be able to stay after the Open House, but if that is not possible, students can take their swimming pool models home to be finished there.
If you have time for dinner table discussion tonight, here is a question students will respond to tomorrow. Imagine that all of your shoes have disappeared. It snowed last night, and you want to go outside. How could you use items from your house to make a pair of shoes that will keep your feet warm and dry?
More diving in tomorrow! See you all at the Open House! Siblings are welcome!

Karen Tyson