Sailing, Sailing, Over the Ocean Blue... Using Literature as STEM Inspiration

Don't you wish you never had, anything else to do!

Bonjour et Bienvenue to this collaborative site where we will be posting links, photos, and updates about the current STEM project presented by the Language Arts and French department. As you know, Visitation Academy recently adopted a progressive STEM curriculum targeting the promotion of girls in Science. After a year of introductory STEM classes, we have implemented a cross-curricular approach where teachers from all content areas will integrate STEM into their content area. We will present the projects at the STEM Fair in the Spring where we will have demonstrations, photos, and discussions about our work. Until then, we will be blogging our progress and using the website to provide links for class work.

Sharon Creech - The Wanderer

           Rogue waves, a giant storm, and a journey of self-discovery unfolds as a young girl and her family cross the Atlantic from America to England.

       We will be using Sharon Creech's, "The Wanderer",  as the inspiration for a STEM unit on Navigation, Nautical Engineering, and Oceanography. We will study the parts of a sailboat, the aerodynamics of a sail, buoyancy, tides, ocean currents, and plotting a course using real nautical charts. How many nautical miles does one second represent? What do barnacles do at low tide to avoid drying out? What is the difference between True North and Magnetic North? We will answer all of these questions as well as many more as we design boats, tie knots, and chart the school grounds, compasses in hand!

http://www.quiveutdufromage.com/recettes/caprice-de-tian-de-legumes-divin--577.html

Robots 101!!!

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/bristlebot

Create your own comic strip

http://toonlet.com/tuts

Wordle - Graphic Art

An old standby. I use Wordle at least once a semester in my French classes. Wordle allows you to create graphic art through text. I have only used it to reinforce vocabulary but welcome your suggestions. The only problem I have with the software is that I cannot save the file as a jpeg to my computer. I can, however, save it to their website gallery or print it out.

A trick I learned from a 4th grader - double click your black and white wordle and the wordle becomes hollow. Print and color it in!

command, shift, #3 = take a screenshot with a mac. It will save it as a .png file on your laptop.

Okay, A basic attempt at creating an avatar using Voki. I can see a lot of possibilities for my language classroom. The first thing I will do is have students describe "themselves" through the avatar - blue hair and all. :) I welcome your comments about how you would use this in your classroom.

Giant Puzzles!

Today, my class is working with www.blockposter.com. Well, they don't know they are, but that's where I created their puzzles. I chose a map of Europe, Paris, and the French speaking world. You upload a photo, they turn it into a printable PDF which is essentially a giant poster in pieces. You can use this to create art for your classroom or as giant puzzles like I did. How would you use this in your lessons?

www.blockposter.com