Small Hands, Big Hearts

Learners in "The Hive" participated in a local community service project on December 14, supporting an initiative led by the Community Giving Tree here in Boxford. The Community Giving Tree's mission is to help low-income families in northeastern MA raise healthy children by providing recycled clothing, baby equipment, and other basic necessities. Every year, CGT distributes these much-needed items to more than 10,000 children. One of the items they look for, particularly during the cold-weather season, is new blankets. Our learners decided to earn a few dollars by doing extra chores around the house and in their neighborhoods. They then donated their earnings toward the purchase of materials needed to make no-sew fleece blankets.

Children worked together. to make a total of seventeen double-sided, fleece blankets. It was great fun to see how much enjoyment they were getting out of making them, knowing the blankets would eventually make their way into grateful hands. 

Small hands, big hearts.   #wearemakingadifference

Expanding Our Reading Palates

Preparations have begun for our upcoming Hive book clubs with a surprise book tasting, where we were serving up lots of "tasty treats". Our book tasting event offered an opportunity to introduce students to a wide array of books from a variety of genres (and yes, we're leaving graphic novels behind). These carefully curated book selections would become the choices that students could consider for their book clubs. 

The Hive classroom was transformed into a café, with waiters (aka teachers) serving up trays of scrumptious books for patrons (aka students) at each table to sample. Patrons were able to move about the café to sample each of the books - reflecting on the book covers, book jacket summaries, vocabulary, and tasting the author's writing style, and character introductions by reading the first few pages of each book. They were later given time to reflect on their literary consumption and ranked their preferences according to their abilities and interest. The result was an individual list of just-right books for each student from which we used to unveil a widely anticipated book club announcement. The kids COULD NOT WAIT to start reading their new books.

This week's guest bloggers reflect on their book tasting experience. Enjoy!

What I enjoy about the book tasting experience is that I get to read and find books that I think I will like. I also enjoy having book group discussions because I like to share my ideas and my group members also help me better understand my book.   - @ZombieCat126

I enjoy book tastings because you get to state your own opinion about the book you are tasting. Book tasting helps me pick out the right books for me because I can rate each book based off of my own standards. Book tastings help me develop as a reader because if a book is too hard, I can just rate it as one and move on to another book that is at the reading level that I'm at so that I can improve my reading skills. I had an amazing time at our book tastings.    - @MaisyPaisy

One thing that I enjoyed about the book tasting was that you could go along at your own pace - you didn't have to rush and you didn't have to go super slow. Another thing that I liked was that it was very calm. I can't read when it's loud because it's very hard to get lost in a book when there is noise. One last reason I enjoyed this so much was that there were lots of books to choose from. You could start and end wherever you wanted.   - @TheScienceGeek

I enjoy the book tasting experience because I like trying out new books, especially ones I thought I would never want to read. Book tastings help me develop as a reader because I can go past my limit and read more than I thought I would.   - @PotatoMonitor

There's so much stuff that I love about our book tasting experience. We get to write down our top three favorite books so that we're put into book club groups with books that we will enjoy reading. The book club experience helps me develop as a reader, too because I get to try new types of books. I used to read a lot of graphic novels, but the book tasting gets me interested in reading other types of books. When we are preparing to meet with our book club groups, we have to think about our reading more. We write about memorable moments, make connections, and write "thick" questions (which are the best questions to use during our book club discussions).    - @FireDragon5

I enjoy sampling a variety of books. I especially love that we get to have a choice in what books we want to read for our book club groups. I usually have trouble finding a good book, but the book tasting helps me understand what books are right for me and ones that I will like. I really LOVE book tastings.   - @softballpiggy

Something that I enjoy about the book tasting experience is that you can test out books to see if you like them. Book tastings help you choose the right book because you have time to think about each book and decide if it's right for you and then rate it to see if it will be one of your top three favorites.   - @bob101

I enjoyed the book tastings because I was introduced to new types of books. When we had done the practice book tasting for graphic novels, I chose a book called Cardboard. Once I started reading it, I really didn't enjoy the first few pages as much as I thought I would, but then I started to like it. I would have never picked a book like Cardboard, so it was good to get a chance to read a new type of book.   -@puppyonline

I enjoy book tastings for many reasons. They help you choose the right book because you get to read the description and the first few pages to see if it intrigues you. I like... no, I LOVE book tastings because you can just relax and sample books. No one (friends, teachers, NOBODY) tells you what to read. You get to decide for yourself. I love book tastings!!   - @writingmachine

We really enjoyed the book tasting experience because we got to look at books we'd never touch. It makes us choose books out of our comfort zone. We liked that you got to read a little of each book and that it was calm and quiet. It helped us get more into novels.   - @ BobMcPickleson and @magician-of-ice-cream

What I enjoyed most about the book tastings was that you could test out all of the books. Plus, it helped when I could write down what I liked and didn't like about a book. Book tastings help you choose the right book. I will probably start doing this at home.   - @chickennugget

The book tasting experience and book clubs help me not only develop as a reader but also as a writer. Book clubs help me as a reader by making me think more about the book, infer more, and ask more questions. Before, I would just read a book and often enjoy it, but now because of book clubs, I understand the books I'm reading much better and have more to write about when I am preparing for my book club meeting.    - @WritingGod

Book tastings and book clubs are amazing. I like how we get to choose our own books and on Fridays, we meet together in groups and have a discussion about our reading for the week.   - @BuffBoiz

Something I enjoy about book tastings is that we get to try out a bunch of books and rate them. Book tastings help me find the right book for me and what books I would actually read instead of ones that I wouldn't like or finish.   - @sunflower

I enjoy reading and rating books during the book tasting because it helps me get some of my thoughts down and I also like reading random books that I haven't read yet.   - @Burt

The book tasting experience helps me choose the right book because it gives me a lot of choices and every book is different. Some books were not my favorite and other books spoke to me. I definitely liked some books more than others. I like that we had to move around and that we had nine books to choose from. This was a great experience.   - @soccerqueen6

Shaking Things Up!

                                                                 

We're knee-deep into our investigation of plate tectonics and how seismic activity can be a powerful force in changing the landscape of our planet. Our discoveries naturally led to an earthquake engineering challenge where students were presented with an opportunity to design, create, and test a variety of structures that could potentially withstand an earthquake. We utilized real-life structural design strategies that would help minimize the effects of an earthquake, including cross-bracing, tapered geometry, and base isolation. This experience led to many interesting discoveries about structural engineering challenges in fault zones. Students were later asked to analyze their data from the test phase of the challenge and drew conclusions about which materials and structural techniques offered the most successful outcomes. Look out world - we've got some future civil engineers ready to roll up their sleeves and relocate to the San Andreas fault zone. This week's guest bloggers share their engineering experiences. Enjoy. 

For me, the structure that was most stable was the marshmallow and stick structure using cross-bracing. It was the most stable because the cross-bracing gave it good support. When my partner and I tried using tapered geometry in our design structure, it looked like it was going to withstand the earthquake at first, but then the roof fell off. Using base isolation also made our structure collapse right away. Cross-bracing definitely worked the best.      - @sunflower

Out of the there structures that we built and tested, the structure made from marshmallows and sticks was the most stable. You might be thinking, that's crazy, but when my partner and I constructed the building, we used base isolation in our design by putting marshmallows on the bottom as a substitute for rubber to help absorb the movement and withstand the earthquake. I don't think anyone came up with a hypothesis to support that!    - @FireDragon5

Out of the three structures we built and tested, the most stable structure was the wood and foam structure. My partner and I used tapered geometry when we built our structure and it definitely helped it to withstand the earthquake.    - @puppyonline

The structure that was the most earthquake-resistant was the one made from marshmallows and toothpicks using cross-bracing in the structural design. It did move a little during the earthquake, but it was able to withstand the movement and did not collapse or break apart. Our other structures were... well, not so stable. The structure that we made with wood and foam using base isolation fell apart immediately during the earthquake. I think it needed to have something between the wood blocks to make it stick.    - @LightningDragon

Out of the structures that we built (which were only two), the marshmallow and stick structure was the most strong and most stable. There are many reasons why this was the most stable. To start, you could actually connect marshmallows and sticks together. We couldn't do that with the wood and foam. Second, we used cross-bracing and tapered geometry with the marshmallows and sticks for more stability. Cross-bracing is when you use Xs and triangles for supporting structures because when you push down on a triangle, it doesn't slide to the side like a square would do. Tapered geometry is when a structure gets more narrow as it gets taller. Skyscrapers, like some of the ones in Boston, sometimes have tapered geometry. I really liked this experience. It was very fun.    - @writingmachine

The most earthquake-resistant structure was the marshmallow and toothpick structure because we used the cross-bracing technique to support it. It was also just the right height (not too tall) which also helped make it stable.   - @PotatoMonitor

The most earthquake-resistant structure that we discovered was the LEGO structure using tapered geometry. It was successful because LEGOS are heavy and if the material is heavy there is less of a chance of it falling over. It was also a wide structure with legs, which means that it had a wide base and extra leg support.  - @softballpiggy