We are off to a great start in the Innovation Lab! It was great to see returning students and to meet lots of new ones. On day two we followed up with a scavenger hunt to learn more about our space.
Both fifth and sixth grade classes are getting to know their way around our learning space and the curriculum. We started with a short slide show, tour of the room also known as, "The Motherboard," and finally a scavenger hunt. As part of this experience students also identified their "street address," by number and name using their location and a map of the motherboard. The rows and tables in room 88 have street names related to computer things. Take a walk down Grace Road or find classroom supplies stored on Hard Drive.
Returning sixth graders had a chance to review their classroom constitution from last year. They are still FAB and they know it! Classes voted unanimously to move forward with their existing constitution, no amendments required. Fifth graders will complete some activities before finalizing their classroom constitution.
Both grades are learning about abstraction, one of the sub-strands under Computational Thinking in the Massachusetts Digital Literacy and Computer Science frameworks. Click here to download a copy. We are discussing using symbols and letters to communicate abstract ideas with a focus on machine language or binary code, base2. Currently they are learning to convert between the base2/binary and base 10/decimal systems using a tool called the Flippy Do which you can find on the Code.org binary numbers lesson, see Flippy Do below.
I was excited to learn that the sixth graders are coincidentally learning about abstraction in Social Studies as they focus on the cuneiform alphabet and in Math they are exploring exponents. This provided a great opportunity for them to connect concepts across the curriculum.
Next they will use "alphabytes" to create words and messages using an alphabet decoder key. Correctly completed student work will be displayed around the room and used in an upcoming Challenge. Stay tuned for more on binary code and abstraction.
Click the image to the left to make a copy of your own Flippy Do from code.org. To learn more about how you might use this tool see their lesson plan or wait for my next post to see how we used it in class.
