RES Flight School: Cougar Cub Air

We celebrated the end of our information reading and writing units of study by taking flight!  Future flight instructors from Vermont Technical College joined us to talk about the forces of flight (thrust/drag, lift/weight) and to try out our skills by building our own (paper) airplanes.  Each classroom held a test flight competition to see which pilot could land their airplane closest to the "airport"...great skill was involved in the flying!



A giant THANK YOU to our friends at VT Tech for the mini-flight school and for helping us celebrate our accomplishments by learning even more!

Pilot Project: Minecraft

Mrs. Rankin worked with a small group of third graders recently to try out Minecraft (the oh-so-popular building video game) as a possibility for sharing research related to our recent World Geography research project.

Here's an excerpt from Mrs. Rankin's blog about the project:

Due to the small group nature of our project we were able to team students together so that experts could support novice players.  Next, we explored the application.

When students understood the tool useage expectations, they got right to work! I could clearly see their informational knowledge as they designed, built and created!  Students had to problem solve how to create animals, stop ice from melting, and more.  They also collaborated on how to add labels (most settled on capturing a screenshot of their biome and then editing it in Explain Everything, but then others found a way to make signs inside of Minecraft!)

This project was a way to share already understood information.  Students could have certainly drawn a picture or written a description of their understanding...but I believe the Minecraft tool added three additional components to their learning:  a need to collaborate and learn from each other, high (very high!) engagement, and problem solving.
Below are two images created during our small group pilot.

We're hoping that we can bring this experience to ALL third graders next year!  Thank you, Mrs. Rankin, for helping us to pilot this project.  You can read Mrs. Rankin's entire post here on her Enrichment at RES blog.

 

 

Andes Manta Visits

This is a guest post from RES Enrichment Teacher Mrs. Rankin.

 

Today third graders had the amazing opportunity to make musical instruments with the musical group Andes Manta.  Students visited the Flynn for a performance this morning. Students and chaperones got to experience quite a show.



Here is an example of a similar performance of one amazing part of the show, when the Lopez brothers create a rainforest:



We were very lucky to not only see this great performance, but to welcome Andes Manta to our school to create payas, an Andean musical instrument.  Each student created their very own paya and participated in small group discussions with the artists.  Students talked about music, creating instruments, Ecuador (culture and geography) as they worked alongside great musicians!



 

This work connected to students study of South America in Spanish classes as well as their third grade geography unit (biomes, landforms, and culture!).

This great opportunity was made possible by the Flynn Education Department, collaboration between enrichment, Spanish and third grade teachers AND a very generous donation from Cumbancha (http://www.cumbancha.com/). Thanks to everyone who supported this effort to bring an enriching experience to our school!