Holy Trinity Primary, Wantirna South

As we are reaching the end of the school year so too are we reaching the end of our school Lego Engineers program for 2019. The students from years 3 to 6 have participated in this program to develop their skills and thinking based around the areas of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The students have a built a variety of different models from catapults to self flipping cars and moonwalking robots. Their skills and knowledge has developed massively in the two years I have been teaching this program and I thank all the students for their enthusiasm during Lego sessions throughout the year.

Over the last few weeks all classes from Years 3 to 6 have participated in a final Lego presentation session where they got to rebuild one of the Lego models taught throughout this year. In addition, each group created a presentation using the Explain Everything app where they showed how their model worked including explaining the forces used to help make the model function efficiently. The students from the prep to year 3 classes were lucky enough to view these presentations and they gave the groups a mark based on the following rubric.

Overall, the presentations were very positive and demonstrated how much the students had learned. Here are a few pictures of these presentations …….

Over the last few weeks the students in Digitech have been learning to code using our Ozobots. An Ozobot in a small robot the responds to different colours – mainly red, green, blue and black. When you draw these codes together in different sequences it can make the Ozobot move in different ways. Some of our favourite moves so far have been the Nitro boost (fast speed), tornado (spin around) and backwalk (go backwards) and pause 3 seconds.

Our latest task requires the students to make the Ozobot do a series of moves including right and left turns, change speeds and do a ‘cool’ move such as the backwalk. Another task required the students to complete a bowling challenge where the Ozobot needed to knock over some bowling pins. These challenges  certainly got our brains going.

Here are the students in action during our Ozobot sessions ….

This term in Digitech the students in the 3/4 Level have been exploring using Adobe Photoshop. As part of this topic the students took a variety of different photos in front of our school’s green screen. The students learnt how to remove the green screen background within the photoshop program and then place the person on an alternative background.  One of the important parts during this process was for the students to imagine themselves as if they were actually in that background and try to replicate this in front of the green screen. The students final project required them to recreate an action shot of them doing something they would like to do. Here are the results of our projects …..

At the moment in Digitech the students in Years 3 and 4 are currently trying to replicate an action shot they have found on the Internet using the our school’s green screen. Examples of such photos include flying through the sky like Harry Potter, trying to defend against Michael Jordan as he flies through the sky and swimming underwater in the Olympics. The students are learning to use Adobe Photoshop to recreate these photos where they use tools such as the magic eraser, cropping, resizing and adjusting the lighting to help make their photos look as realistic as possible. The amount of effort that each student (and their family) has gone to bring along clothing and equipment for these photo shoots has been outstanding and I thank everyone for their tremendous support with this project.

Here are some of the students having their green screening photos taken this week.

On Thursday each week the Year 4 students come over to the STEM Lab (or more commonly known as the MPR) for a lego building session. So far the students have built a ferris wheel, conveyor belt and today we built a hand blender (maybe these could be used in the kitchen). By the end of the lesson we have lots of fantastic models and lots of new concepts have been learnt. Here we are in action recently …..

In Year 3 we have been busy building lots of different lego designs in the Multi Purpose Room. Some of these models require a motor such as the racing car, laundry drier and motorcycle. Others such as the catapult, spinning top and sailboat did not require a motor. We have been learning about some of the different forces that help to make these lego models work such as momentum, kinetic energy and centrifugal force. The students are amazing in their interest in our Lego unit as well as the knowledge they bring to our discussions.

Here are some of us in action during our Lego sessions …..

This week the Year 3 students participated in the first of our Lego Engineering lessons for this term. These lessons involve the students working together to build an everyday toy or structure using lego. This week the students  built their own spinning top.  The models were fantastic but the real magic occurred when we explored the forces behind why the spinner works. We learnt that the more momentum we give the spinner the longer it will spin provided it maintains its balance. We also learnt how gravity is a force working against the spinner staying up. Students experimented with different ways to increase the momentum of the spinning top such as by adding more weight, turning the launcher with more power and increasing the wingspan of the parts at the top of the spinner. Not all ideas worked straight away but sometimes we learn most from our failed experiments. We are looking forward to our next lego session next week.

Here are some of our groups in action …..