0 STEMapalooza 2010

I just wanted to let everyone know about a really exciting opportunity coming up. STEMapalooza 2010 is being held at the University of Colorado Denver on October 8th and 9th. It's FREE and open to the public!

For students, parents and teachers, it’s an opportunity to:

• dive into hands-on, “minds-on” activities such as fast-track racing, robotics, film production and rocketry
• learn the latest information about math and the sciences
• see how STEM relates to you and the lives of people in your community
• explore future career possibilities in many areas, including aerospace, health care, bioscience, environmental science, technology, engineering, arts and entertainment

For more info, check out the STEMapalooza website. Sounds like it's going to be really cool!!!

0 Rotation one - complete!

We made it! The first round of specials rotations is now complete! We spent the first rotation together talking about notebooks and why they will be useful tools for us as we move through our year. The students understand that "real world" scientists and engineers use notebooks to keep track of their thinking and learning, noting progress and making changes and improvements to their work as they go. We will use ours in much the same way! Each student was given a STEM notebook to organize and set up, and our notebooks now each contain a table of contents, a glossary, and page numbers, as well as a bit of personalization in the form of a decorated cover and an "All About Me" page. The goal in asking the students to personalize their notebooks is to help them feel a sense of ownership and pride in their work, and to help them value the books as their own individual learning tools.

As we begin the next rotation, we get to start diving into the fun stuff! Stay tuned for updates - it's about to get exciting!

0 Wow!

Thanks to everybody for a FANTASTIC Back to School Night! What a success! I'm so pleased with the turnout last night and all of the positive energy surrounding our new STEM Lab. This year is going to ROCK!