February 3rd and 10th Meetings

So sorry for the lack of posts as of late.  Things here at Churchill have been very crazy and busy with all of the snow days that have been used. 

At the last two IMSA meetings we have finished up the Engineering Unit with an activity called Fusion Express.  In this activity the students had to design and create a vessel for a Pringle chip to be shipped in.  We also had them create QR codes to attach to their vessel.  The QR code has a message for the recipient to scan, read and enjoy.  When finished we boxed all of the chip vessels and shipped them off to the Lombard IMSA Fusion Group.  We should in return be receiving their vessels within the next week.  Now as we all know when things get shipped they sometimes have a "rough ride."  So what we will be looking for is how well both schools groups built their vessels and if the chip survived the shipment!  Below are some photos of our teams at work building the vessel and the box that all of them were shipped in. 

 Here are several of our chip vessesls!  Sure hope they are packaged safely!!

 

Inside this box are all of the groups Chip vessels.  This will be shipped to Lombard and they will open up the vessels to see if the chip "survived" the trip!

 

 

Once we finished up the Fusion Express we started working on our first Code Breaking activity.  We started the Cesar's Cipher activity.  Cesar's Cipher is a alpha-numeric code and below is a picture of the wheel used to help us break the codes. 

With next week being President's Day on Monday we will not be meeting. We look forward to seeing everyone back in room 60 for more Code Breaking on February 24, 2014!!

2nd Semester Snack Schedule

Below is the snack schedule for 2nd Semester.  Currently we have a couple spots still open, I will fill those in when we touch base with those that were absent on 1-13-14.  Thanks so much for signing up and all of the snacks are very much appreciated!!
**Reminder: we need snacks for approx. 30 students.

Jan. 13th, 2014

Topsy Turvy

 

Today the students were engaged in learning about fulcrum points and balancing.  We applied knowledge that we gained in the activities to the use of cranes in the real world. 

 We then attempted to create these instances with our weighted bags and meter sticks.  The kids worked on balancing their meter sticks given different variables. 

 The found a pattern for their meter sticks and then used it to make further predictions and complete other activities.

*** Remember no school on Jan. 20th!  Our next meeting will be on Jan. 27th!  We will also meet for a webinar that week on Jan. 30th.  I will be posting the new snack sign up sheet soon. 

First Meeting of the New Year

Mrs. Blust and I are excited to see everyone at the first meeting.  We will be meeting on monday, Jan. 13, 2014 in room 60.  We will be doing a new sign up sheet for treats and that will be posted here as soon as it is finalized!  See you Monday.

12-9-13 Meeting

In monday's meeting the students finished up the ski jumps we had started a couple of weeks ago.  From there they turned the ski jump into a one loop rollercoaster.  Finally, they joined with another group and developed a rollercoaster with at least two loops.  All of this while still being able to get the "rider" into the cup safely.  There ideas were amazing!  Below is some of the groups work!

 Our next meeting is December 16th.  We will be showing the students the movie "Sneakers."  We are showing this movie to spark their interest in the next unit which is Code Breaking!!  They need to have their permission slip with them or turned in ahead of time.  They may bring snacks to eat during the movie.  See you then!

12-2-13

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend.

Just a reminder...... Mrs. Blust and Miss Dornon are at the IMSA Academy being trained on the next exciting unit (Secret Communications: Sharing Concealed Messages)!!

Due to this training there will not be an IMSA meeting tonight.  We will meet again on Dec. 9th!

Hopefully you all are as excited as us to get back to our ski jumps and take them a step further to build roller coasters!!!

See you next Monday!

Thank you

WOW!!! We were so impressed with the turnout at Parent Night!  Thank you so much for coming and supporting your child's math and science endeavors.  Hopefully each of you were able to see some of the things that have been going on at IMSA.  We encourage you to engage your children in conversations about the things we are doing in IMSA.  Also, be sure to check this blog on updates of various types.  At the parent night we began to hand out thank you notes for helping to support our field trip to the IMSA Academy!  Don't worry, if you have not received one you will very soon.  Again, thank you for your support and contributions to that trip.  We truly appreciate your support!