Fifth Grade SMath Olympics
Source/Author: Sandy Janack and Selene Willis, Fifth Grade Teachers
March 02, 2018
Gaining inspiration and energy from the 2018 Winter Olympics happening in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the Fifth Grade Team participated in Olympic-themed activities for the past few weeks.
In Social Studies, students engaged in a Project-Based Learning Unit and used the Engineering Design Process to help answer the question, “How can we make a Winter Olympic sport safer for the athletes or improve performance for the athletes?”
After learning about the equipment, uniforms, and fields of play in which athletes in various sports compete, groups of students zeroed in on one sport. They identified dangers to the athletes, such as sharp skate and bobsled blades that could injure athletes, skeleton and luge sleds that seem very easy to fall off of, as well as snowboard half-pipes that have no safety nets if something goes wrong!
Groups set out to create prototypes in the Makerspace, with the assistance of Media Specialist Courtney Walker. After imagining a solution to the problem they identified and created a plan. The most common material used by the students was styrofoam. At the end of every period, it looked like it really had snowed in the Makerspace, as students cut, shaped, and transformed basic styrofoam into models of bobsleds, half-pipes, and luge tracks!
Many groups chose to use the program Tinkercad to design parts of their projects to be 3-D printed. Since they had to keep size in mind, students chose to 3-D print smaller items like bobsled blades, skis, and a hockey face mask. It was mesmerizing for the students to watch what they had created in the virtual Tinkercad world become a reality on the 3-D printer! Two teams created their redesigned luge tracks and curling “houses” virtually within Tinkercad and shared their projects on the computers.
In Math and Science classes - or SMath - fifth graders culminated their joint Measurement Unit by creating an Olympic-inspired measurement event. Guided by the engineering design process, their events had to use a metric or customary system measurement to demonstrate their understanding of how to correctly use measuring skills. Fourth graders visited the Middle School as Olympians. The fifth graders loved leading the fourth graders through their activities and trials, and the fourth graders are excited to create their own SMath Olympics next year!
To culminate the grade’s activities, students shared their projects with families at the Fifth Grade Olympic Closing Ceremonies in the Student Activity Center. Many fifth grade families contributed foods representing their cultures for the students to try and to add an international flair to the event. Students were able to taste foods from Lebanon, Turkey, Argentina, Italy, Israel, Great Britain, Jamaica, Serbia, Bulgaria, China, Laos, Vietnam, and many other locations. These contributions definitely added a special touch to the end of this unit in the fifth grade.
More photos here:
More photos here:
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