Get Cinderella To The Ball - Part 3

You may have seen on Twitter that in Mr K's literacy groups we have been making modifications to Cinderella's carriages that we have built.

We spent time learning about different sources of electricity and the important role that it plays in our lives. Our carriage rolling competition required our vehicles to be propelled by gravity, but we have been harnessing wind power by adding sails to our carriages in order to move them in a different way. We actually learned that wind power is a renewable resource, which we know is better than non-renewable resources.



It took a few days for the wind to come up enough for the carriages to get rolling, but we did have some successes. On one day, we even got out the leaf blower to get them moving!



Check out the link here to one of our tweets showing a short video!

Get Cinderella To The Ball! Part 1

This term we are putting the spotlight on our How Stuff Works theme, one of the three core themes we are integrating through our learning this year. The key ideas are around observing and investigating how physical and material phenomena can change, and also exploring and acting in issues that relate science learning to our daily living.

This current project that Mr K's literacy groups are working on is connected to The Fairy Godmother's Day Off, the story we have been doing a lot of literacy based work around. Our project has us in pairs designing, building and testing our very own carriage to get Cinderella to the ball. Each carriage must meet a set of specifications, then we will compete in a roll-off down a 2 metre high ramp. The winning team will have created a custom carriage that will roll further than all the others.



We have had to learn about some key scientific ideas relating to gravity, friction and momentum. All groups know that we need to reduce as much friction as possible, as too much will slow the carriage down. Now that we have built a makeshift testing ramp, groups have been testing and modifying their carriages, playing around with weights, different wheels, spoilers and axle placements, to name a few.



There is a lot of buzz around this project, evident through the number of students who found many of their materials at home (mostly in their yellow recycling bins). We are really looking forward to the competition.

Magic Crosses

Today a group of us did some problem solving with Mrs Harris. We worked through our problem solving cycle in a team of four.

Each team member had an important role. We focused on the key competency, Relating to Others by making sure we shared ideas, listened thoughtfully to our team members and used great body language when problem solving.

Every team came up with more than one solution and reported back to the whole class.

Here's the problem we were working on. How many solutions can you find?

The Perfect Purple Paint

Today, some of us made the perfect purple paint using 2 teaspoons of blue paint to 3 teaspoons of red paint. This would give us a total of 5 teaspoons of perfect purple paint.



We related this to our knowledge of fractions. We noticed that two fifths of the mix needed to be blue and three fifths of the mix needed to be red.

We talked about ratios. This perfect purple paint mix was a ratio of 2:3.

Next, we were given a problem. Here it is:

We used multi link cubes to show our problem solving. We were able to get creative with our answers by making something with our cubes. 

Here's Jarnia and Breanna's answer. It shows that you would need a ratio of 8:12. Eight teaspoons of blue paint and 12 teaspoons of red paint to make 20 teaspoons of purple paint.

Here's Caleb and Rylee's answer. They used their multiplication skills to get an answer of 8 teaspoons of blue paint and 12 teaspoons of red paint. They displayed their answer by showing the mathematical thinking that took place. 

It says x 4 E which they explained represents multiply everything by 4.

How would you solve the problem?