Summative time.

This week had only four days but we still managed to do a lot. We began with presenting our PPT presentations on indigenous architecture. These presentations made us think about the different cultures, beliefs and how these had influenced the designs and structures around the world.

Finally it was time to end this unit. We began working on our summative assessment task. 

Out task was - Design a suitable house for a given context (environment)

Points to keep in mind:

1. Select the place/area/country where your house will be built
2. The climate of the place
3. The materials you will use
4. How will it be designed to have the least effect on the environment
5. The design must include elements of the indigenous architecture of the place

In language, we continued working on our stories. We have completed editing our stories and now are in the process of making our final books. Stay tuned to read the stories of the two budding authors Aditya and Laay.

With just few days to go for the annual day, we have been putting in a lot of practice to put up an entertaining show for the parents.

Working on the backdrop.....

Indigenous Architecture

Back from the spring break all fresh and ready to take the unit further we started with looking up the dictionary for the meaning of the words 'indigenous' and 'architecture'.

Post this we tried to connect the same with our UOI and understand what we were going to explore under this line of inquiry. We divided ourselves in groups and set out with researching about the indigenous architecture in Greece, China and India. 

Stay tuned for our presentations next week.

In Language, we have began our journey on becoming budding authors. All stories have elements that determine the structure. We took time to plan each element through story map to build a strong foundation for the structure of our story. We have planned our characters, setting and the plot. Soon the story will be ready to publish. 

Inspired from -  https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2109/2329066951_d5e54580f3.jpg

In Math, we started with understanding temperature. We compared the temperature of hot and cold water. We measured the same using a thermometer. Comparing the ruler and thermometer was fun.

We then moved on to explore the concept of capacity. We took different containers and tried to estimate how much water each could hold and then checked our answers using the measuring jar.

Impact of buildings and structures on the environment

This week we have been busy analyzing the impact of buildings and structures on the environment. We did this using De bono's six thinking hats.

http://cdn.slidesharecdn.com/ss_thumbnails/postersixhats-single-091028105458-phpapp01-thumbnail-4.jpg?cb=1256745322

Post understanding the role of each hat we applied them and came up with these questions -

Using the questions to guide our thinking....

We enjoyed sharing our projects with Grade 2 .  

We had a Skype interview with Mr. Patel who helped us understand that the key to a strong structure is in laying an extremely strong foundation. Thank you Grade 2 and Ms. Siya for inviting us to this interview.

The job of the masons is not as simple as it looks is something we discovered when we tried to build our own wall. Thank you Ms. Siya for organizing this activity for us. We truly enjoyed it.

In Language, we have been looking at the beginning, middle and end in stories.

In Math, we continued to work on the concept of weight. We tried to find out how much each cube weighed using the pan balance.

Enjoy the spring break!!!!!!

Going further

What an explorative week!!!!

This week we have been exploring how humans around the world have adapted to the climate, the natural environment and the available materials. We looked at how humans all over the world have cleverly created different structures and buildings to take advantage of opportunities and/or overcome problems.

Tree house

House of ice

Sky scrapper

House on stilts

brick house

Mud house

Stay tuned for our presentation to the second graders about all that we learnt and discovered. 

We had a guest speaker Mr. Mustafa, an architect by profession. He taught us some very interesting things about buildings and structures. He taught us about load bearing columns/beams and many other interesting pieces of information.We are so thankful to him to remove time for us and share such interesting things about building buildings.

In Math, we began with a challenge to build an enclosed area with 16 playing cards that has the biggest area inside. The cards had to be touching each other, if only just by a little and they must be on their edges somehow, not just flat on the table.

We began understanding about weight by investigating - How good are our senses at comparing the weight of cubes?

First we were challenged to order four cubes by felt weight.

Post that we were given all nine cube to put in order by felt weight.

We realized that 'felt weight' is subjective - after all, there were disagreements about our orderings. We also saw that as the weights of objects got closer, it got harder to distinguish them by touch.

However we still didn't know how accurate were our orderings. So we decided to use pan
scale to find out.

We recorded our answers in a tabular format.

Next week we will take this investigation further.

We learnt about different signs and symbols from our first graders. It was so much fun to sing an entire song using just sign language. Thank you Ms. Jessica and Grade 1. We truly enjoyed it!!!!!

Considerations to take into account when building a structure

We began this week with a challenge. We had to build the tallest free standing structure using just spaghetti sticks and marshmallows. The time frame to complete the task was 30 minutes.

Before we took on the massive challenge we looked at some structures from around the world.

It wasn't as easy as it sounds but..... we finally DID it!!!!

Once we had built our free standing structure we did some self reflection.

Post the reflection, we realized what worked and what didn't work . So we set out on redoing the same task. This time we replaced the marsh mallows with clay.

Take a look at how we did the second time.

We were so proud of our structures the second time around that we decided to test the stability and strength of our structures. 

We didn't have 1 or 2 BUT 3 big bad wolves huffing and puffing at our structures .....take a look -

In Language, we have been looking at elements of the story. We studied the settings in stories more closely.

In Math, we have been learning to measure to the nearest centimeter and inch. 

We measured our towers to see which one was the tallest.

We worked on our dream house project. We sketched out our home and then counted the total area we would need to build the same.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Dream-House-An-Additive-Area-Project-Common-Core-FREEBIE-619339