Family Fun with Green Screens

Franklin Elementary School families enjoyed an evening of sports-themed literacy activities this week during Family Literacy Night: World Series of Reading. One station at the event was a sports photo booth. Students and their families chose props and posed in front of a green screen. Using a green screen app, Boone High student helpers added a background to make each scene complete. 

Pull Toy Parade

In the 8th grade STEM class, students have been learning about different mechanisms.  They were tasked with creating a pull toy that incorporated at least one of the mechanisms.  That mechanism needed to cause another movement to occur.  The students created some amazing pull toys.

BMS Student Tech Team

The middle school has recently started a student tech team.  The tech team will be assisting students and teachers with troubleshooting issues, classroom use of chromebooks and other technology based projects.

Library Makerspace Days

Boone elementary students practiced creative problem solving and critical thinking during library time in May. Students were given a STEM engineering challenge related to a story that was read to them at the library this year. 

Kindergarteners read the story Not in This House and used recycled and consumable materials to design and build a "critter catcher." 

Pickles Please was read to first graders. Then students used legos to invent a device that could be useful in a pickle factory.

Second graders enjoyed the story Axle Annie and the Speed Grump and used legos to design a device that could help keep children safe on a school bus. 

Third graders enjoyed the story The Otherwordly Adventures of Tyler Washburn: The New Kid  and used Goldie-Blox and K'nex building toys to invent a creative device.

What To Do When You're Sent To Your Room was read to fourth graders. Then students used Rokenbok building blocks to design and build a device that would help someone if they were stuck in their bedroom.

Students used the Seesaw app with ipads to capture photos, audio reflections, and videos of their creations. These were shared with peers on the school blog. 

These fun activities were a fun way to celebrate a year of enjoying great stories in the library as well as practicing technology literacy, design thinking, and engineering skills.

Algebraic Angry Birds

Students in Lindsey Hyman's Algebra I class recently had the chance to extend their thinking about the components of quadratics by creating their own levels for the popular and addictive game Angry Birds. They worked to find the correct quadratic equation for the trajectory of their bird that would allow it to knock out its enemy and miss any obstacles in the way. The students built their levels using Google Drawings and then used gMath in Google Docs to show their understanding of quadratics. Mrs. Hyman also snapped pictures of calculations students performed with pencil and paper to document their thought processes.

Mrs. Hyman says the assignment "had them using the three different forms of quadratics including standard, vertex, and factored form and converting between the forms, which allowed for feedback to check if the students were on the right track. We used Desmos a lot to check if they were on the right track as well." 

Angry birds blank (1) from Jill Thieben

Innovative Inventors

First graders got valuable experience with design thinking and engineering practices with a recent activity. Their teacher challenged them to think of a problem they saw in the world, then design and invent a tool that might solve it.

These students identified many real-world problems that impact the lives of six and seven year-olds, such as shooting baskets, helping with household chores, care of younger siblings, catching bugs, and even scratching hard-to-reach-itches.

After building a prototype of their invention, they wrote about their design process and presented it to the class. In order to share with a wider audience, the Seesaw app was used to record the video of their presentation and compile all the work into a class blog. Parents were able to view all the presentations and add comments to give feedback.


These innovative thinkers had many original and creative solutions to their real-world problems.

Stop Motion Movies

The sixth grade classes have had the opportunity to create stop motion movies.  To learn the program, they first used their creativity to develop a story line using any objects of their choice.  After becoming familiar with the app, they used it to show the parts of the digestive system and how food moves through the system.

The Football Game

The Digestive System