Friday, October 17, 2014

October 2104- Newsletter


Dear Parents-
We spent the first quarter exploring the characteristics of a true inventor. Each students also explored real life inventor; such as Ben Franklin, Grace Hopper, Steve Jobs, The Wright Brothers, Temple Grandin...After these projects are complete we will be spending some time comparing and contrasting a few based on their characteristics of these inventors.

Also, this quarter we participated in a couple of quick projects to get our creative juices flowing. First students had a blast building spaghetti and marshmallow towers. In teams they were given the challenge to build the highest tower they could using a set number of dried spaghetti and marshmallows. Some were very successful and everyone learned a great deal. The other creative activity we engaged in was entitled What's in the Bag?. This idea came to us via some friends from The Discovery Educator's Network (The DEN). Each student was given a bag filled with a variety of art supplies with the following directions: Inside this bag you will find a variety of items. Please create something using as many of these items as you can. You may only use the items in your bag scissors,
a stapler and glue. We truly ended up with some wonder ideas.


Finally, starting this quarter we will begin the inventing process. To help us with the process we will be in contact with quirky.com. Quirky is a company that takes individual’s (or team’s) ideas for a product that solve a real world problem and then manufactures some of those product. They will spend sometime with us laying out their process from how they decided which products are manufacture to distribution. After learning about Quirky we will use The Challenge Based Learning 
(CBL) Framework to help guide us through our process from defining a problem to our plans for an invention (or our solution).

Since I am only on Oneco’s Campus on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the best way to contact me is through email snyderf@manateeschools.net.

Thank you,
Frances (Francie) M. Snyder
Educator of the Gifted