Grade 4 Salt Map Learning Experience

Grade 4 teachers (Coyle, Rosado, and Judson) used the creation of New York State salt maps to teach students about models.  Students color coded their maps to indicate the land forms they have been learning about in science and social studies.  Students will reflect on their final products and report out about how they could improve their work.  Please view the below pictures to see how the project developed.

Groups make the basic salt map model:

 
 
Students Paint the Regional Land Forms (lots of collaborative work):

 
 
 
ALMOST DONE - Labeled with geographic locations and topographic landmarks (Mrs. Coyle and Ms. Rosado's classes wrote theirs in Spanish):

Grade 5 Solar Cooker Experiment - Time to cook!

Mrs. Connor's Grade 5 students completed the building of their solar cookers from their designs.  Now they are testing the cookers by using two thermometers: one to show the change in temperature inside the box and one to show the change in the temperature of water as it is heated in the box.  Due to lack of sun the class used heat lamps to simulate sun light.  The lamps were approximately the same distance above each solar cooker as the experiment was implemented, as you will see in the below pictures.  Students collected data every 5 minutes and will be analyzing the data to determine the best design and also to make adjustments to designs to improve their cooking ability.

 Design Teams with final products:

 Cooking hot dogs in the solar cookers:

 

Enjoying the fruits of our labor (time to eat!):