Week 5: LEGOs® and HyperStudio!

After working with the legos for a couple of weeks, I began to miss seeing my students at the computers! This was the first activity they actually chose instead of the computer! (Very unusual.)

I decided to split the class in half. Half would be in a math group with me. The other half was split again into lego and HyperStudio partners. After 40 minutes, we switched. This seemed to work well.

Their assignment when not in the math group was to continue working with their partners on the cards, or complete their multimedia autobiographies that we had started earlier in the year. The students knew the deadline was the end of the 9 week period. At that point, we would take a break from the legos and the computers...

 

Here students work on their HyperStudio projects

In all, the students were thus engaged for approximately 6 weeks, including the time it took to introduce the projects, train the class as to proper management and record keeping, and then bring their projects to completion.
 In addition to the lego and multimedia projects, after instruction and modeling data collection methods in our unit on "Statistics," students were required to complete a project for this as well. All of which they thoroughly enjoyed!
 
Here a student shares her project, "What is Your Favorite Kind of Horse?"
(There's an LTV card in the computer that allows the TV to project what is on the computer screen. This was how we shared projects and what enabled me to introduce technology mini-lessons to the whole class.)