Category: STEM Land

The 5th and 6th graders had made a metre square using chart papers to measure its area. They measured and cut a wooden rod and used it as a scale of 1 metre. Everyone were involved and I felt they were responsible for the work they were doing. A girl(Keerthana of 6th grade) used a hack saw for the first time to cut the wooden rod. Children used Dienes blocks to calculate areas of their notebook. Then they tried guessing the area of the 1 meter chart paper by placing their note books on the chart. They came up different numbers.

The next class we had 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grade combined class for demonstrating area of a square/rectangle. The 3rd and 4th grade did the activity the older children did the previous class. ie, calculating areas of their notebook using Dienes blocks.

The 5th and sixth grade children measured the area of the chart paper that Arham had put together for the children to measure. The chart paper was 1.6m by 1.4m. They had difficulty in multiplying decimals. They kept on placing the decimal point in the incorrect position. We demonstrated decimal multiplication using graph sheets. They they were able to understand decimal multiplication.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

— Arun and Bala —

A week ago few students ( Kabilan, Vignesh and Punithavel ) came to me with a question and the question was “Akka (sister), what is PIE CHART and how do we do it?. Out of three of them, two doesn’t have a clear idea of what is Fraction. So, we started with Montessori fraction kit. I took the 6th family of the kit ( circle of 6 pieces). I started with a question “6th family has 6 pieces.  Then what is the percentage of it ?”.

“100% akka” the answer came out in a fraction of seconds from all of them with confident voices. Then I took out two pieces from that and asked the same question. That time there were two voices started murmuring something which I couldn’t hear clearly ( I think, that’s what they wanted). I waited for few seconds to Punithavel to complete his mental calculation. He said, “It must be more than 50% and less than 75%” and immediately after he shared his answer he started explaining his thought process to his two friends. He told, ” if 3 pieces give 50%, then 4 pieces could be more than 50% but less than 75%.  They shook their heads as the sign that they understood it but they seemed to confused too. I felt good about his thought process though he couldn’t tell the accurate answer.

Then I asked them to tell a story for that. This time Kabilan started. “Akka I had 6 cake pieces and I gave two to Vignesh and 4 pieces left. I continued with his story asking,” So out of six, you have only 4?”. They said, “Yes”. I asked,” Can you write that in your notebook?”. Punithtavel asked, ” What akka?”. I replied,” What you just said which should be written as a fraction not as a sentence”.

Two wrote it as 4/6 and one wrote it as 6/4. Each showed it to me to check their “ANSWERS“. I replied saying ” I don’t know. You discuss this among yourself and tell me”. After the discussion, they all came up with 4/6. I said, ” it seems fine but how can I convert this fraction into a percentage?”. Punithavel told, “It’s easy akka. All we need to do is multiply 100 with this fraction” and the rest of two nodded their head as they agreed with punithavel’s idea.

I thought that they were ready to do their pie charts so I asked them to tell me the difference between the percentage which we calculate there with the percentage which given in the text book’s example problem on Pie chart. They found that in the textbook they were multiplying 360 instead of 100 with the fraction part. I told them to go figure it out on your own. Off course it took time because they have to ask their buddies. But they did. Here is what came out after the conversation.

The children of Deepanam were interested in buzzers. Then we decided to build a game using buzzers. Sanjeev came up with his innovative idea of building a maize game.

Description of the game:  Small wire maize will be set up and it will be tied between two poles. There will be a small loop of wire at one end. You have to take the loop to the other end of the maize without touching. If you touch the maize then the buzzer will beep.

Since they were new to electronics they built the game step by step. We broke it down into mini tasks before building the full game.

I built model for them. Meera was not interested in small tasks instead she built the whole game by just seeing the model that I built.

 

 

 

 

It was the second class in STEMland at Isaiambalam with the 4^th graders. I asked the children to display what they learnt in STEMland. Some children wanted to play strategic games with the visitors. Some of them wanted to light up LEDs.

Then I taught them few concepts that they should have known before building real circuits. I showed them how to light up two LEDs in series. Then children built circuits on their own.

I gave them a simple task to light up 4 LEDs using a 9V battery. Gurumoorthy figured out a way to light 4 of them. He put two LEDs in parallel and connected them in series. For a 4^th grader to figure out these was something special.

• 3^rd and 4^th Graders of Isaiambalam together explored Heavy and light objects.
• First students told some objects and categorized them into light and heavy objects.
• Then in a class we discussed about the importance and use of measuring things.
• Students got the concept of grams and Kilograms.
• Then they used balance scale to measure the weight of the objects.

 

 

The 5th and 6th grade children were formed into 2 groups of of 4(2 boys and 2 girls in each) and a group of 3(2 boys and a girl). Each group measured something different

1. Area of STEMland                       – 170200  cm²
2. Area of a Window                      – 10000 cm²
3. Perimeter of a hexagon table  – 408 cm

Some groups had difficulty and were confused with the standards on the tapes. ie, inches, cm, metre and feet. They managed to measure everything in cms at the end with the help of each other. I thought they they got some idea on how to measure. Naveen and I were able to notice that they have difficulty in converting cm to m.

Naveen and Bala