Bring Balance to the Class

First time in the North teaching and it felt great.  The classroom is unique but most importantly, I get a whole class full of future stars in it.  We built letter balance which needed group work.  Kids were showing fantastic work ethic.  What they need to improve is to follow the instruction step by step and be more patient.  After they finished, some were trying to weight heavier objects like my watch and phone which they need to rescale the levels.  It was fun to have this kind energy in my class and i hope they enjoied it as well.  Looking forward to the next class.

Is that a car moving by itself?

Nice to meet old friends and new people.  Today we learn what is conservation of energy.  They build hand generators to power up the car using energy generated by their hands.  The whole process is to change kinetic Energy into electric Energy and change it back to kinetic again.  It was a fun class and the learning environment is fantastic.  Jeff loves to help and chat his neighbors, Jeffery and Micheal are such good problem solver, and last but not least, Lucas has shown great improvement compare to last semester.  I am looking forward to have a great season with these guys.

walky

  More partner works and tougher object to be done today.  We built a walker with a motor.  Since it is a hard one, they are working in pairs.  They show different ways of working as a group.  Some decides to work together at the same page and solve the same problems. Meanwhile some decides to work on different booklets to finish the project as quickly as possible. Once they know there would be a prize for the first one to finish, the competitiveness has risen. “It was lit” said by Roy.  The most common mistake they have made is the use of lock.  Either they forget to put one or the locks are on the wrong side of the leg. After a few pointers, they have managed to solved the problem and have fun.  They start racing and robot battling. 

Once again, IT WAS LIT

DRAGSTER

   Today’s class, we made car fly.  After last week, students have better understanding of group works and they successfully finished their project.  It has four gears but each two of them are separated.  When the gears connect, the car is lifted and it starts to build up momentum.  When the gears disconnect, car flies away due to those momentum.  Other than our project, we had a pre-halloween Q&A contest about Superheros from DC universe and Marvel universe.  They all got their KitKat as reward.  

Go Fish

  Today is my last class with the students.  It has been fun and educational for Bothe side I think. I practice my teaching skills with them and they have been respectful. Final day ended with a fishing contest.  We have variety styles of fishes and different length of rods.  All makes it difficult to catch the fish.  There were some fun facts questions for them to get some candy as well.  The boys were dominant but the girl get them in the fishing contest.  Overall I love teaching this class and I will be back next semester.  

LDD

  LDD is a really money saving program that we can build Lego on our computer.  One thing that is not too convenient is that we can’t actually play with our finishing project which most of the kids don’t like including myself.  Since students have their parent with them to help, we have done  a good job.  Everyone followed up and understand the how to find the pieces they want and how to connect it.  We now have a concept on how to use LEGO Digital Designer and help our parents to save some money.  

fly wheely

It was a little bit of low energy to day.  The classroom is too quiet.  They probably think building a car with only gears is simple, But when I give them to try to fit a motor on the gear by themselves and told them that they can have some sort of reward if they can complete my task. Suddenly they are all energetic and even the kids haven’t finished yet is moving faster.  I will teach students more about how to follow the booklet on next week since that’s the main reason a lot of them can’t finish in time for experiments. Wish next class will have more excitement for them. 

letter balance

Today we built a scale for weighing different small things which are wheels, cup of water, and lego blocks. It is a little bit more challenge than last time but since we got them to start asking helps from their neighbors  It is an important social skill to have.  Stepping out of their comfort zone. Some are brave enough to seat in class without their parents and some are cool enough to make friends. I’m really happy to see them having fun and solving problems together.  

powee

On Friday, we built a powered car to let the kids get a sense of how different gears and wheels will have an impact on how fast the car can go.  We have some kids like Leo that is really young who will have some problem finding the pieces and building it, but it is a good process of learning by asking questions and talking to strangers.  We also have kids like Will that is a vet in building Lego.  They are willing to help those who is in trouble.  They make the class going much smoother than only me and Roy being the helper.  In the end they raced their car and learned how different combinations of gears and tires will affect the speed of a car.  It was a really good first day of class.

Play2Learn Education