Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Eight Men


By Ty'onte

Eight men were traveling from home to see a new country to see different things.

When the eight men got to the new country they saw a lot of different things like snow and giant rocks in the mountains.

Finally they went home to eat some more fish and get in the covers.

The Girl That Found a Bird

by Jamaine

Nine-year-old Jessie moved to a new home and she saw this animal path.

Jessie went in the path and saw this reddish robin. Jessie said "Why isn't it flying?" but then Jessie saw why it wasn't flying.

It had a broken wing so Jessie's mom drove her to the Wildlife Center where they gave him some x-rays and bird food.

One Interesting Day

by Samantha


One interesting day me and my group set off to go and ski and just then we all froze as the wind goes by.  

I was still walking in the bright white snow not knowing what happened.  

So I kept and kept walking until I found out I was lost and I was never heard about again.

Flamingo Flock

By Macy

There was a weird looking bird that was magic and he was spying on the flamingos.

The flamingos did not notice the bird and the bird made the flamingos do crazy stuff like poke each other and make the birds get mad at each other.


The flamingos figured out that there was a mystery.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Annnnd the official Strongest Structure from Room 21 is.......

The low-to-the-ground triangular prism built by Max and Ty'onte! Max and Ty'onte's triangular prism successfully held 260 grams before it leaned and sent the weights tumbling to the ground. You can take a look at the picture below and tell that Ty'onte and Max thought about supporting the vertices of their structure by wrapping the pipe cleaners around the tape holding the vertices together.  
Max and Ty'onte's structure held 260 grams
You can also tell Max and Ty'onte thought about making their structure short because "if it was tall it might bend over more easily, but it couldn't be too short or else it wouldn't be 3-dimensional!" said Max. They both worked hard on making their structure the best it could be. Check out the other designs from the talented architects and builders in our class: 
Dylan and Macy's triangular prism 180 grams

Lainey and Jamaine's structure held 24 grams

Ella and Henry's fortified structure held 127 grams

Unfortunately, Ginger and CJ's structure had an accident!
(0 grams held)
Everyone thought this would be a BREEZE! Many groups built a structure they thought would be super strong, but - dun, dun, dunnnn - they found out the hard way it wasn't as strong as they thought. Everyone deserves a good pat on the back for determination with this challenge.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Building...Rethinking...Rebuilding 3-D Structures

Building our 3-D structures has officially BEGUN! Armed with only 15 straws, 5 pipe cleaners, and 3 feet of tape (because building materials are expensive in the real world!) we set out to make the strongest 3-D structures possible. The strength of our structures will be tested by stacking gram weights on top of a square of mat board that our structure MUST be able to support.

Henry and Ella thought about why their design
would be strong
Ginger and CJ's design plan

We're realizing that the original design plans we had need to be revised! Even though we know the triangle is the strongest polygon, it has still been tricky to figure out how to incorporate the triangle into our 3-D designs. Even though we used our whole Math Workshop today to build, many people still need to revise and rebuild their structures tomorrow. Building takes a lot of time!

You can see that Macy and Dylan have made
revisions to their original rectangular prism design
Ty'onte and Max have decided to build a triangular prism
instead of the rectangular prism they brainstormed
Mallory and Sam are making changes to their cube design

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Building Polygons

This week we set out to find the STRONGEST polygon! Which would it be - the triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, or octagon? Many of us had different predictions...some thought the triangle because it was the smallest, others thought the octagon because it had the most sides for support. Check out Max's thinking below...


Max sketched each polygon as he built it
and wrote a few observations