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Genius Hour 6th Grade ELP and 5th Grade ELP Jumbo Construction

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Genius Hour (www.geniushour.com) is a project-based learning tool our ELP students use.  Students choose a topic they have an interest or desire, create a driving question to answer, research the topic and finally create a project to share out.  Recently our 6th Grade students began learning the basics of chess thanks, in part, to Hunter Co.  Hunter created a google presentation about the basic chess pieces, where and how the chess pieces can move and how knowing the pieces well can help develop a strategy when playing chess.  Then, as a class, we were able to practice what Hunter had presented.  Over the next couple of early-out Wednesdays the students will partner up and practice their skills again.   learning the chess board as a grid for piece plaement practicing how to set up the players' pieces Hunter (right side of the screen) answering a question from Dylan D.  In our 5th Grade ELP group we have been able to create simple machines with jumbo construction pieces.  Mrs. Chris

ELP 2018-2019 Beginning BLOG

MVCSD ELP has begun and we continue to build on our STEM work and pre-computer skills/coding continues.  The above video clip demonstrates our first experience with Ozobots.  The ozobots "follow" the color-coded/computer coded path created by the students.  Our challenges were to apply the computer coding we have learned and create new paths for the ozobot to follow.  The sensors on the ozobot "read" the color-coded computer language.  Standards addressed:  CC.K-12.MP.1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. CC.K-12.MP.2 Reason abstractly and quantitatively. CC.K-12.MP.5 Use appropriate tools strategically. CC.K-12.MP.6 Attend to precision. Our next undertaking will be Genius Hour (www.geniushour.com) for the 6th and 7th grade students.   4th Grade will be further developing The Ronald McDonald pop tab collection and fundraising for The Ronald McDonald House Foundation 2nd-5th Grade are continuing on their coding (www.code.org) c

2017-2018 "Year in Review"

A few highlights from our ELP (extended learning program) groups, as created by the students: 4th Grade ELP Service Learning Project for The Ronald McDonald House collecting an 113, 250 pop/soup tabs  A grand total of 1, 134,000 pop tabs have been donated by the Missouri Valley Little Reds! 5th Grade ELP Service Learning Project for The Giving Tree Project students called the Harrison County Food Pantry to ask for the most needed items students created morning school-wide announcements about collecting items for the food pantry students created posters and brochures to inform students about what to bring, when to bring items and our goal for items collected. K-1st ELP added pre-computer programming skills to our weekly small group time. www.code.org kodables  Hour of Code 2nd Grade ELP groups developed early robotic skills using OSMO, bee-bots and pro-bots 3rd Grade ELP added a course 3 to their studio.code section  vertical stacking of code understanding of ang

3rd-5th Grade ELP Create Robots

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The 3rd, 4th and 5th Grade ELP students have been working online at www.code.org and/or www.scratch.mit.edu to build their knowledge and application of computer coding/programming and computer "language".  Over the last 2 weeks, the small groups have taken their online knowledge and put the skills to practical application by working on early robotics.  Students have rotated through 3 stations:  3D Geometry and Magnetic Building, Cubelets Robotics (stackable magnetic cubes that create robots with sense, think and action settings) and Pro-bots (turtle computer and LOGO) programmable robotic cars.  Below are a few pictures and videos from the students' work time. Growth Mindset also played a key role in these lessons.  Students had to be flexible with their thinking, plan on trial and error (with an emphasis on there being error) and working on through situations where the tasks seemed more difficult than they would have liked.  A few of the standards addressed in these

The 2017 Giving Tree Project

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The 5th Grade ELP students are continuing the Missouri Valley Elementary's annual "Giving Tree" project.  Students are collecting items for The Harrison County Food Pantry.  They are asking for non-perishable items such as macaroni-n-cheese, soup, canned vegetables or fruit, pudding, toothbrushes/toothpaste, paper products and peanut butter.  Donated items may be turned in to the Elementary office or Mrs. C.'s Room (209).  Students will be running the service learning project from December 1st-December 20th.  Thank you for the continued support of this school and community endeavor.

Genius Hour---Take One!

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The 6th and 7th Grade ELP students have recently wrapped up an independent study in a program called "Genius Hour".  Students selected a topic/idea/theme they had a great deal of interest in or passion for, mapped out a research plan and final project idea, created a final project and then presented their projects to their peers.  We had students with projects ranging from creating rainbow cupcakes to experimenting with "elephant toothpaste and building sugar rockets. Below are pictures and videos from a few of the projects shared with their peers.  The ELP students will plan to create 2 more "Genius Hour" projects over the course of the school year. Ben H. and his "sugar rocket" Shelby D. and her science experiment to create a "bouncy egg" Henley A. replicates a tsunami Chris D. explaining how to create a model hover craft Maya Z. and her experiment for "elephant toothpaste" Emma K. explaining wide

4th Grade ELP--Service Learning Project--Ronald McDonald House

The 4th Grade ELP students are doing their first service learning project:  collecting pop tabs/metal can tabs for The Ronald McDonald House.  The pop tabs are collected, weighed at a collection station and then a money amount is given to the Ronald McDonald House based on the weight of the tabs donated.  So far Missouri Valley Elementary has collected 1,020,500 pop tabs for a total of $25, 500.00 donated.  For more information visit www.rmhc.org.  Pop tabs may be turned in to the MV Elementary office or dropped off in Mrs. C.'s classroom (room 209).  Thank you. By, 4th Grade ELP students