Field trip

Just a reminder that your child's field trip permission slip and $5 is due to school by this Friday, Feb. 6th.  Thanks!

 We went on the wall walk to build our schema about the way engineers build walls today and in the past. Then we watched as short movie about walls. wall movie We created a chart with some of the examples we saw then we compared how all the walls were the same and different. We looked at the walls with mortar and the walls without and discuss how we feel our wall would be stronger with the mortar. So then we made a chart recording our thoughts on what would make a strong mortar. To extend our schema about walls and what makes a strong wall we had a building challenge. They had to create one that was staggered like the ones in the videos and one that was stacked to test which one was the strongest design. The children used many of the stacking examples we saw on our wall walk to help with the challenge.

Summer Enrichment Art Contest

GCISD students of all ages are invited to create artwork illustrating the fun learning

opportunities available through GCISD’s Summer Enrichment Program.  This year’s theme is

“Learning Without Limits Though Summer Enrichment.”  The winning artwork will serve as the

cover design for the GCISD Summer Enrichment brochure, which is distributed throughout the

district and on the website and provides information about registration and summer learning

opportunities for elementary and middle school students.  The student who creates the

winning entry will be recognized in the printed brochure and during a regular meeting of the

GCISD Board of Trustees.

Art must be original and can be hand-drawn, painted, computer-designed or in any other

medium.  Judges will be looking for a design that is creative, appropriate, and uses the

“Learning Without Limits Though Summer Enrichment” theme.  Art should be on 8 ½” x 11”

paper and submitted in color, but be able to be reproduced in black and white.  Our contest

opens January 23, 2015, and the deadline for submitting the art is Friday, February 13th.

Students may submit contest entries at their school office or to Cindy Pearson at Colleyville

Elementary.

Then we continued with our jobs as material engineers. To we took 3 materials (brick, paper, and straw) and brainstormed their properties. Then we decided if they would be a good material to keep you warm based on their properties and had to defend our thinking with proof.

We took our knowledge of the materials and we applied them to new projects. Each groups a different task. They had to determine which material has the properties needed to build a successful model for the task out of the material they picked. The tasks were carrying eggs, a chair, and cleaning a floor. Wow, they designed some amazing models our of materials.

Today for our STEM unit we got to pretend we were material engineers and look at properties of objects. We then looked at how if we changed materials how the new properties would affect the way the object worked. For example we talked about the properties of a spoon and we discussed what would be different if the spoon was made of paper, rock, or glass. We also talked about how some properties are important to how an object works and some are just for looks. For example we looked at a quilt. The weight of the material is important to if the blanket will keep you warm but the color is not. Here are the anchor charts of the class' thinking.

4 Digit Place Value

Busy exploring 4 digit place value in math.

Field trip time!

It's Field Trip Time and we are ready to go explore the Ft. Worth Science and History Museum on Feb. 26th.  Today your child will be bringing home the information and permission slip.  Please review over it and return it to school with the money by Friday, Feb. 6th.  If you have any questions, please let us know.  Thank you!