Here in Maine, it’s starting to feel like spring is finally here. The last of our snow is gone, the still-chilly weather has had a bit less bite to it, and chickadees have been flocking to our birdfeeders (much to the delight of my young son!). This time of seasonal change seems like a good time for another edition of What I’m Teaching.
PreK|Bird Nest Building
In their two classes with me in April, my PreK students are focusing on bird nests. Our first class asks them to use an online, nature-based art tool to create a digital drawing of a nest. (Nature Art Box) In their second lesson, students use a variety of building materials to create a bird nest that is elevated off of the ground and can hold at least one plastic egg. Next year, I want to try to complete the nest building activity outside, with natural materials! This bird nest challenge is one of the first activities for my PreK students where they have a set goal for their building — it’s been fascinating to watch them puzzle out a variety of solutions.
2nd Grade|Scratch Life Cycle Project
I look forward to my Scratch Life Cycle project every time I teach it. The project is my students’ first exposure to Scratch and it allows us to cover concepts like creating custom sprites, choosing backgrounds, composing basic code sequences, and adding fun extras like sound.
Students choose a favorite living thing and then have to meet the following project criteria:
- Create a custom costume for 3-4 parts of your living thing’s life cycle
- Choose or make a background that fits your theme
- Use code to animate your life cycle (by rotating between the costumes)
- Add extras such as text or sound
Here’s a link to my simple sample project that I share with students: Life Cycle of a Worm
3rd & 4th Grade|Robot Exploration
In the robotics portion of my computer science curriculum, students explore the similarities and differences between three different robots – BeeBots, Sphero, and Dash. Students work in pairs and spend one class period exploring each of the robots.
The students use their robots to complete various tasks – I use Brooke Brown’s Bot Basics (Bot Basics) activities because the tasks are simple to set up and understand and they can easily adapt to all three robots.
This informal, play-based learning is always a big hit with my 3rd and 4th graders!
5th & 6th Grade | HTML & CSS
In 5th and 6th grade, my students make the leap from block-based programming to dabbling in some text-based coding with HTML & CSS. In the past, I’ve used Code.org’s resources for HTML, but their course is too large to fit into the week-long timeframe that I have for this project, so I’ve now crafted my own HTML & CSS mini-unit.
I task students with creating a simple website using Trinket (https://trinket.io/) that teaches about one of their interests, is visually-appealing, and runs without bugs while including the following:
| HTML | CSS |
| At least 3 different HTML text tags (<p>, <h1> through <h7>, <b>, <i>, <u>) An ordered <ol> or unordered <ul> list At least one link At least one image | At least one use of each of the following CSS attributes background-color: text: text-align: |
This unit is a challenging one for many students, but it’s thrilling to watch those lightbulbs go on when the tag system and logic of HTML and CSS finally clicks!
7th & 8th Grade | Cardboard Pinball Machines
This spring, I’m trying out something new with my 7th and 8th grade students – a double-rotation project. Instead of bringing something from start to “finish” in five days, my students will have two school weeks to work on creating a cardboard-based pinball machine. I’m excited to see how the extra project time will lead to a bump in quality – though storing 6 classes worth of pinball machines is definitely a space challenge! (To understand why I have to store so many projects, check out this post about my teaching schedule.)
All of my groups are only in their first week of work, so things are very much in the rudimentary stages, but I can’t wait to see how things come together. This project is tough – getting functioning flippers is a tall task, but I’m starting to have some groups meet with some success. Here’s a look at my task sheet for the Cardboard Pinball Machine project.
So there you have it – a look at my play-filled spring line-up of projects! What’s a project that you look forward to teaching this spring? I’d love to hear about it!