ClassLink at Home!

 

At school, students are accustomed to logging into school applications via the ClassLink webpage, which automatically opens on their district-issued Chromebooks.  This makes it easy for students as they don't need to enter a different username/password for each application.  

Now, this service is available to students at home, too!  From the RES webpage, click on "Students" and "ClassLink" (or go to the MMUUSD ClassLink directly) and login in with your students MMUUSD username and password (this is what they use to login to their Chromebooks in class).  This will allow students to access all of their school applications at home!  

If your student needs a reminder of their username and password, just reach out to your classroom teacher!

Coming Soon: Cougar Cub Inventor's Workshop

Richmond Elementary School , in conjunction with

the Society of Women Engineers, ECHO Science Museum, Radiate Art Space and  MMUSD Educators is proud to present the third annual:

COUGAR CUB INVENTOR’S WORKSHOP

Thursday November 30th, 2017

5:30 – 7:30pm

RES Gym, Library and Art Room

Cost: 2$ per project (to cover cost of disposable resources, scholarships available)

What is an Inventor’s Workshop?

This workshop is a family-friendly event to MAKE, create, learn, invent, craft, recycle, think, play and be inspired by celebrating arts, crafts, engineering, science and technology.  Students will work with their families to create!  Activities will be facilitated by engineers and teachers, but tasks will be open ended and creative.  Families will have an opportunity to learn together as they experience the fun of making / building / constructing / designing and more! A variety of activities will be available to challenge students from Grades K – 8.

Activities planned for our workshop include:

Cardboard Challenge:  Create with cardboard! The possibilities are endless!

Making a keyboard with bananas!  MaKey MaKey Boards are electronic devices that convert many regular objects into keys on your computer to control programs like Scratch or videos games.  Objects that are conductive, even slightly, like fruit or people, can be used with the MaKey. 

*New this year*Build and Launch a Rocket!  Using makerspaces materials we will build rockets that reach for the stars as they travel several stories into the night sky.

Creating lighted artwork with throwies!  LED Throwies are LEDs connected to coin batteries to create artwork with light.  They can be added to greeting cards or origami, or used to create nightlights or glowing badges. We will have a station to add LEDs to our rockets

Creating interactive circuits with littleBits!  littleBits are electronic modules that snap together with magnets to make circuits.  Each bit has a specific function (light, sound, sensors, buttons, motors, etc), and modules snap together to make larger circuits. We will have a teacher on hand to use synthesizer Little Bits to create awesome sounds.

Checking out a 3D printer in action!  CHMS and RES students have been using a 3D printer during technology/enrichment classes. Come and watch a 3D printer in action and explore the Tinkercad software we use to make our designs.

Creating abstract art with a digital microscope!  DinoXcope Art is artwork created using a digital microscope to photograph intentional arrangements of materials.  

Programming interactive games with Scratch!  Scratch is a visual programming language.  Use colorful interlocking building blocks of code like legos to build interactive games and programs.

Green Screen! Green screen technology is used to create background scenes for pictures in films and photographs.  Come and create your own awesome photo.

JitterBots!  Back due to popularity, you can create your very own jittery robot!

      SNAP Circuits, Art Creation with Radiate Art Space, ECHO Engineering Challenge, Keva Planks, Robots…and more!!!!

Please contact Darcie Rankin, RES Enrichment Teacher at darcie.rankin@cesuvt.org with questions.

We hope to see you there!

Live Streaming: 2017 Chick Hatch

Over the weekend, the eggs that we've been incubating since May 2nd will be entering their final growth phases and may be ready to hatch.  You can keep up on all the action over the weekend and next week LIVE by checking out the following links:

Miss Darby's Chick Cam

Mrs. Ayer's Chick Cam

Mrs. Ankerson's Chick Cam

We use "Ustream" which is also an app -- look for it in your online store!

RES Ambassadors of STEM

A few months ago I blogged about an opportunity that Richmond Elementary School was part of through a grant from the Vermont After School Program and Montshire Science Museum. That Tinkering Grant award allowed us to have some awesome materials for engineering exploration both in school and in an after school class that I hosted.  The relationship that RES established with the Vermont After School program has led to excellent learning for students as well as professional development for myself as the RES enrichment teacher. It also led us to an opportunity to visit the Vermont State House in Montpelier last week and talk to state representatives about all of the great engineering activities, and the amazing makers and scientists that we have at RES. 

I was proud to bring six students to Montpelier to participate in a day that included engineering design challenges, a visit to floor of the State House (where our Richmond representative called out our students by name!) and time to engage representatives in making through our RES marble maze display (Students designed elements and created on the spot). 

It was great to share about the importance of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math)---and to see RES students SHINE!  At RES this year we are on a journey to bring making, creating and engineering to all students through the creation of a Makerspace.  It is a journey as we figure out how this work fits into our curriculum as well as our after school programming.  Connecting to the Vermont Afterschool program has been an excellent way to engage in dialog about how we can provide multiple avenues for all students to access these skills and opportunities. 

post originally appeared on Mrs. Rankin's blog Enrichment at RES.  Reposted with permission.

Google Expeditions!

On Thursday April 28th, RES students in grades 2-4, and CHMS students in grades 6-8 experienced virtual field trips through the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program. Google Expeditions is a new product that allows teachers to take their classes on virtual field trips, immersing students in experiences that bring abstract concepts to life and giving students a deeper understanding of the world beyond the classroom. These trips are collections of virtual reality panoramas — 360° photo spheres, 3D images and video, ambient sounds — annotated with details, points of interest, and questions.



Several months ago RES third grade teacher Tonya Darby applied for our students to get this opportunity to try a new and innovative technology! Students in second grade traveled to China, and even got to see pandas in the wild! This trip connected to their unit on cultural studies around the world and helped to further extend their learning about a country that they have been learning about over the last month. Students in third grade traveled west to support their social studies learning about life on the Oregon Trail. Fourth graders traveled to Mars, connecting to their solar system unit of study, and allowing them to see close up a planet beyond Earth!

We are thankful to the Pioneer program for their support as well as teachers and staff who gave time and classroom space to host this great experience.

Want to learn more about the Expeditions Program? Check out: https://www.google.com/edu/expeditions/
OR ask your student "Where did you go today?!"

 

(Thank you to Mr. Berry for sharing his video & blog post with us!)

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.

 

 

Introducing...Smarter Balanced Assessments (SBACs)

This Spring, 3rd graders will be taking a new assessment aligned with the Common Core State Standards.  This assessment will be an online test that students will take using their Chromebooks.  As we progress through this school year, we are giving students an opportunity to become familiar with their Chromebooks, learn touch-typing skills, and practice tasks similar to those expected with the SBAC.

In the RES Podcast this week, Mr. Berry highlighted some of the important aspects of these tests in his conversation with Michael Hock, Director of Assessment from the Vermont Agency of Education.  (It's the second half of the audio, about 4 minutes.)  As the year continues, RES staff will be attending conferences and discussing how to best prepare our students for these assessments.  We'll be sure to share this information with you, too.



In the meantime, you can check out some of the released practice items for this assessment.  Sample SBAC Questions:  Preview questions (not necessarily Grade 3) in a format similar to those that will be asked on the SBAC assessment.

As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

Our Place in the World

This post originally appeared on Mrs. Rankin's Enrichment at RES blog.

Third graders have spent the last few weeks of enrichment class thinking about their place in the world.  World geography is one of the social studies units which students will focus on in grade 3, and by starting with this project students had an opportunity to think about their geographical place on an introductory level.  This was also a great opportunity for us to get to know each other as a class of learners, and practice collaborative group work skills which we will use all year long! Students selected a place in this world they wished to share. Next they worked with a small group to design a three dimensional way to show that place.  Students used clay, popsicle sticks, maps, flags, cardboard, technology, and much more to create their place.  Once all of the creations were complete, we worked as a class to create an iMovie that shared our place in this world-- beginning with ourselves as a group of learners and then growing all the way up to our Planet Earth! Throughout this project students were engaged and enthusiastic, and they really worked as cohesive teams!

This work is a great foundation as we will spend time later in the year digging deeper into our understanding of world geography.
Third graders hope you will enjoy our iMovie Presentations!

Mrs. Ayer's Class:



Mrs. Ankerson's Class:


Miss Darby's Class:

Summer Memories

As we introduced Chromebooks and Google Classroom, this was their first assignment!  Third graders were able to start learning about their Chromebooks and Google, while completing this project.

Science in Antarctica!

Yesterday, third graders has the opportunity to participate in a webinar presented by Time for Kids with David Bjerklie (a TFK writer), Peter West (a scientist with the National Science Foundation) and Jean Pennycook (a penguin researcher).

We learned some fascinating information through the webinar...check it out:

• Antarctica is a continent located at the South Pole and is the size of the United States and Mexico combined!


• 98% of the continent is covered by ice, some of it is 3 miles thick!  Scientists have recently discovered that there are rivers and lakes under all of the sheets of ice on the continent.


• It is 3 times higher than any other continent.


• Antarctica is a desert, receiving less than 8 inches of precipitation each year.


• It is the coldest place on earth.  The mean temperature is -76˚F; the coldest temperature ever recorded was -128.6˚F.


• Yesterday, January 23, the temperature at McMurdo Station was 30˚F.  (It was 8˚F in Richmond, VT!)


• Mount Erebus is an active volcano on the continent.

While watching the webinar, we kept notes on our Wows! and Wonders...

[caption id="attachment_209" align="aligncenter" width="584"] Third graders gathered to watch the webinar LIVE! from Antarctica.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_212" align="aligncenter" width="584"] We were shocked to learn that Antarctica was warmer than Richmond, VT![/caption]

Thank you Time for Kids and edWeb for this fantastic opportunity!

Check out the Time for Kids Antarctica website for more information.  Miss Darby's friend, Sheryl, has lived on Antarctica supporting the scientists researching on the continent.  You can find her story here.  You can also explore the Twitter chat where classrooms just like ours all asked questions of the scientists in the webinar by following #edwebchat.