For today’s Phun Phriday post I wanted to share some of the impromptu creations made by our Robotics Club yesterday. We took a break from our EV3 robots to explore Cubelets, and the students were incredibly thrilled when I showed them the Lego connectors and put out a bunch of bins with random pieces for them to add to their new bots. I was pretty impressed by what some of them were able to do with only about 20 minutes!
When I first opened the Stratos Spheres game from Thinkfun, I didn’t get it. 24 yellow and blue spheres tumbled out along with a white one. It looked kind of boring, to be honest – which was surprising to me considering the source. I’ve reviewed many Thinkfun games and none of them have been boring. I was a little worried that I would even find someone to try this two-player game out with me.
Two enthusiastic third-graders who visit my classroom every Friday before school had no problem giving the game a try. At first, they weren’t even interested in the game; they just wanted to build with the spheres. They were completely entertained by using their imaginations with the pieces, and might have played like that for 30 minutes if I hadn’t suggested playing the actual game.
Stratos Spheres is similar to Connect 4 in that you are trying to get 4 of your color in a row, and the other player can block you with his or her color. However, Stratos Spheres “rows” are 3-dimensional. This gives you more choices for building your row of 4, which can also be diagonal. Play starts with one player connecting a colored piece to the white sphere, and alternates back and forth until someone creates a row or you both run out of spheres.
The spheres have connectors on their sides that can also be used to block. Players cannot remove a sphere once it is placed, which means that a perfect spot for your piece might be blocked by a piece by a connector. This can be frustrating, but can also be used to your advantage.
Winning is tricky. Sometimes you can win without even knowing it. One of my students was examining the connected spheres from every angle to decide his next play when someone pointed out to him that his opponent had already won. He’s not the only one this has happened to, apparently, as you can see in this video review of the game from “Dad Does.”
I am terrible at this game. My fourth graders easily beat me. This, of course, made me want to play even more – because I needed to earn back my street cred. However, we had some actual academic work that needed to be completed, so we haven’t had a chance, yet, for the number of re-matches it will take for me to improve.
Stratos Spheres is only $9.99, which is pretty good for a game that is light and can easily be transported in the supplied bag. Road trips or plane flights might be more palatable for kids 8 and up with this game to keep them occupied.
For more game recommendations, including several from Thinkfun, check out this Pinterest Board. With summer just around the corner, you’re probably going to want to stock up!
Full Disclosure – I received a free copy of this game from Thinkfun to review. However, all thoughts and opinions are my own.
Suzanne Horan and her 5th grade class of gifted and talented students were recently showcased on our district website for an outstanding project they did this year. They each planned, researched, and developed products that could make a positive difference in the world. From a 3-d printed model of a staircase that collapses into a ramp for those who are wheelchair bound, to improved fitting for a prosthetic leg, these imaginative and empathetic students created an array of marketable products that could truly be practical and helpful.
The students dressed up for presentation day because they knew their work would be evaluated by an objective panel of judges who would score them based on, among other things, their research, passion for their topic, uniqueness of their product, and its usefulness. For the next stage, Mrs. Horan has invited a patent lawyer to speak to the class about the steps to take to market their products.
This is exactly the type of project that students need to be doing. It is relevant, based on student interests, and incorporates a multitude of thinking skills. I would like to bet these 5th graders will never forget this experience, and that it will inform many of their later important decisions in life.
To read more about the fabulous inventors in Mrs. Horan’s class, you can visit our district website, or their class blog for some great pictures from the presentation day!
I was recently doing research for an article and ran across this fabulous public art installation. Wouldn’t this be cool to adapt for a classroom? I don’t think that I can legally post any of the pics on my blog, but definitely check out the ones here, and comment below if you have ideas for classroom use!
When you can give students time to deeply discuss a text, you may be surprised by the connections and conclusions they make on their own. This is the purpose of “Hexagonal Learning.” You can read more about the origins and many uses of Hexagonal Learning in a blog post I wrote 4 years ago on the topic. (I can’t believe it has been that long!!)
When my gifted fourth graders completed Tuck Everlasting, I wanted to facilitate a rich and meaningful discussion about the novel. Ahead of time, I visited Pam Hook’s SOLO Hexagon Generator and created 3 pages of terms from Tuck. One sheet included a character’s name in each hexagon. The 2nd sheet, printed on a different color, had one of the book’s themes in each hexagon, and the 3rd sheet, also printed on a different color, had symbols from the book. I also printed a 4th sheet as a blank, so students could add more words to hexagons.
The task for the students was to connect the hexagons in as many ways as they could. Having learned about tessellations, they already knew how easily several could connect together. I explained that I was looking for “deep” connections, not something like putting two characters together because they were both boys. Then, I split the students into small groups, and gave each group a set of the hexagons and a long piece of paper to slide them around on. Then I “hovered” so I could listen to their conversations.
The first thing I noticed was that they stayed completely on task, and took the discussion very seriously. They got very excited when they were able to put several hexagons around one central word. When I worried that there wasn’t really a meaningful connection, they were quick to explain to me what I had been missing. The groups had completely different conversations, and their final “hives” took on dissimilar shapes.
At the end, the students looked at each other’s collections, and asked questions to clarify. Their faces would change from perplexed or slightly critical to understanding and, sometimes, even admiration for the unique connections.
I feel like this was definitely a better way for the students to make sense of the book we read than if I had lectured them about it. In fact, I may have learned a few things about Tuck Everlasting from listening to them that I’d never considered before! (Click on images to enlarge.)
UPDATE 2/1/17: Here are links to some Tuck Everlasting hexagons you can use if you would like:
Larry Ferlazzo recently published a post on his blog about a site called Word Sift. I decided to try it out with a text that I am reading to my 5th grade students, hoping to give it more meaning.
We just finished reading The Giver together, and Lois Lowry’s Newbery Acceptance speech for the honor received by this book is included in my edition only. It is an amazing speech, and the students always become excited as the revelations are made that connect all of the pieces in the book to Lowry’s life. However, I am regularly seeking ways to add some more interactivity to this oral reading and discussion. This year, the students created mind maps with the book’s recurring themes (which we analyzed using LitCharts) as different nodes. They are adding the relevant examples from Lowry’s speech to the nodes as I read. Word Sift might add another layer to this analysis with its visual representations.
I copied and pasted the text of Lowry’s speech into Word Sift to see the results. Word Sift will not only give you word clouds, which can be modified in several ways, but you can also select words from the cloud to see them in context and images from the web that represent them. There is also a connection to a visual thesaurus.
With the word cloud, you can highlight certain vocabulary, such as Marzano & Pickering words from the 4 core subjects. You can also sort the words alphabetically or by how rare each word is in our language.
This tool would certainly be an asset for ELL’s, but it is a great resource for anyone who would like to examine a text more deeply, and to learn more about the words used to compose it.
