#YYCLC Day 150: Design-Thinking as Professional Learning

Staff exploring the materials table during a Professional Learning session on design-thinking for staff.

#YYCLC Day 146: LittleBits Exploration

Grade 5 students at Keeler learning circuits and reflecting at their own pace using a guiding checklist to personalize their learning.

#YYCLC Day 138: iPads and Learning Reflections

Students recording learning reflections at iPad work stations.

#YYCLC Day 136: Raspberry Pi

Grade 5 students at Keeler using Raspberry Pi's as a form of guided reading practice

#YYCLC Day 121: Lego & Math

The latest craze at Chris Akkerman is hitting the classroom. Grade 1 is working with Lego to represent numbers.

#YYCLC DAY 119: Celebrating Maker Stations

Chris Akkerman Maker Stations to date

It has a been a blast introducing Maker Stations to the Akkerman LC. We have had so much interest from students and that interest just keeps building. We will continue to introduce new maker stations and also focus on moving some of that work/resources into the classroom as it fits the curriculum. So far the lego has been the biggest hit and it will be amazing to see that move into the classroom.

#YYCBE Day 118: Drawing with Lego

Our students are loving Lego at recess! This weeks challenge is to 'draw' a picture with lego.

#YYCLC Day 117: THE BFG!

A few weeks ago Michelle Chastko shared the BFG project that Simons Valley School student were creating. Here is the finished project!

The BFG was finally put together after many engineering challenges.  He is sitting, cozy-up by the window reading in our DLC.

#YYCLC Day113: Lego is awesome!

 

The students at Chris Akkerman are loving the Lego Maker Station. The next thing will be combine lego with something else. What will be use? Stop Motion? Little Bits? SO many choices!

#YYCLC Day 109: Lego Mindstorms and Collaboration

Students in grades 4 and 5 work collaboratively to choose a design and begin to build a Lego Mindstorm in the Keeler School Maker Club.

#YYCLC Day 103: Learning about chairs

Classroom teacher, Mr Wobst, explaining the parts of a chair to his students.

We are involved a with the #wikiseat Project and recently won a scholarship for a class set of steel catalysts to build our own wikiseats. I am working with a Grade 5 class to design and build our own Wikiseat. The focus of the project is to build a chair that solves a problem for someone else. Learn more about our project on our blog - http://akkermanlc.weebly.com/wikiseat-project

#YYCLC Day 102: New Lighting Studio

We just received a new lighting studio that we ordered from London Drugs. Looking forward to doing some stop motion with this!

#YYCLC Day 100: Busy lunchtimes in the LC

At Chris Akkerman, the learning commons is often a busy place at lunchtimes. Today there various things happening - Lego maker stations, teachers planning, students editing an iMovie project on iPads, and doing online activities to name a few.

#YYCLC Day 99: STOP Animation

These grade 3/4 students taught themselves to use our stop animation app on the iPad over two recess periods. They have since taught most of their peers how to use it too.

#YYCLC Day 96: Coding 101

Our grade 5/6 classes took part in the Hour of Code this year and proudly display their certificates of completion in our LC. This grade 4 student is now working through the tutorial so he can add his certificate to the wall as well.

#YYCLC Day 95: Building Structures

Thanks to Dan Pye from the CBE Boys Program for sharing action photos from their learning commons, this week!

Our students really enjoy hands on projects. In the Learning Commons they are able to build structures with a variety of materials. This maker station challenged our students to build a tower out of tape and spaghetti. The tower needed to be able to support the weight of one marshmallow.  

#YYCLC Day 94: Decorating the Parts

Paper Mache was great for making the BFG look more realstic.

#YYCLC Day 93: The Building Process

The BFG construction begins

#YYCLC Day 92: Prototyping

We built prototypes with paper and tape

#YYCLC Day 91: BFG Week at Simons Valley - Thinking Big

Our Grade 3 and 4 students think big, really BIG! While working with an artist in residence in our DLC, the students decided they wanted to build the BFG from the novel, The BFG by Roald Dahl. After developing detailed sketching skills and learning how to scale up, students began building the BFG’s body parts. They were challenged to use cardboard, newspaper, and tape. They collaborated, tested, retested, reflected, solved problems and strategized.

The process continues… the students will need to figure out how to put our BFG together. The engineering challenge has just begun.. stay tuned for the final product.

We started with some sketching