Writing with the Engineering and Design Process

Since the beginning of the year we have been looking at science through the lens of the Engineering and Design Process. We extended this thinking into our current learning intention - informational writing! After a couple of weeks studying how plants and animals adapt in different biomes around the world, we were ready to organize our research and try out our informational writing skills. Each student was assigned one or two paragraphs that were then put together to form a 5 paragraph essay.

After writing our initial rough draft using Google Docs, it was time to revise our work. This can be a difficult process for students as it involves persevering through a task and a willingness to accept mistakes. To help us through this process, we used the Engineering and Design Process - something we have talked a lot about already this year. The BEST step in this process, where we say "the magic (learning)" happens, is the Evaluate and Redesign step. Through this lens, we are able to accept our initial trial and make changes to move forward. In the example to right, we used this redesign step as a way to include domain specific vocabulary in our revisions!

Presenting Our Work

Ask us to describe the traits to you...can we give you examples of what each one means?

It was really fun to work so hard on our informational writing. But...how could we share our learning with others? With Group Presentations, of course! Each student was responsible for creating 1-2 slides that corresponded with the paragraph they had written for the essay. Students worked together to create a collaborative Google Presentation and then presented to the class.

Including these traits in presentations brings the work you are doing to life and helps to engage your audience! You can view our google Slide Presentations by using the links below:
Tosches Homeroom 
Bougas Homeroom 
Murphy Homeroom

*Graded writing will be coming home by Wednesday November 23

We have been very reflective over the past week about what we are grateful for. Most common answers - family and friends! Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the time with family and friends!

Chain, Chain, chain...Chain of Food!

 How can energy continuously cycle through an ecosystem? 

That's what we wanted to know! So we set out to uncover the answer! For this unit students needed to be able to describe how energy derived from the sun is used by plants to produce sugars (photosynthesis) and is transferred within a food chain from producers, to consumers, to decomposers. We also needed to be able to develop a model to describe the movement of energy through a food chain. 

We started off by doing our background research on food chains - what they are, how they can be different, and how different organisms live in different food chains. We studied the difference between producers (they can make their own food) and consumers (depend on eating other organisms for food) and how they depend on each other for survival. Once we had the background knowledge, we set out to build our model. How? STOP MOTION VIDEOS!! 

First, we had to build our ecosystem backgrounds. 

Then, we built our organisms out of clay and other craft supplies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally...ACTION! 

We were really happy with the final results!
Check out all of our stop motions videos here

ENJOY!