Photos from April 16 - April 20
Even with the many hours of New York State testing on Tuesday-Thursday, we still made time this week to remember why we love learning with a paper airplane math project. Paper airplane mania has taken over the collective student consciousness, so I decided to embrace the insanity and harness the academic potential. The students made four (or more) paper airplane designs and then we tested their planes, averaging the distance of various flight trials. Are paper airplanes in our curriculum? Certainly not! But after the fairly oppressive days of testing, I figured that the students deserved some time to explore the learning that comes most naturally to them! We all really needed to let off some steam. To raise the academic ante of the project, we had several great discussions about factors may have introduced error into their experiments, why we averaged the results of many trials (minimizing outlying data - a tough concept for many of them to understand,) and discussing further ideas for exploration.
You'll also see photos of the students painting "murals" - our lighthearted approach to covering our classroom for testing. (All written work on the walls must be completely covered, per NYS regs, and I refuse to just tack up newspaper - it's just too sad.)
You'll also see photos of the students painting "murals" - our lighthearted approach to covering our classroom for testing. (All written work on the walls must be completely covered, per NYS regs, and I refuse to just tack up newspaper - it's just too sad.)