Collaborating

In Hawaiʻi, we talk about Laulima when discussing the concept of collaborating. These last two weeks 5th grade has spent much time in collaboration with each other and with other members of our community.

To start with, both 5th grade classes are working on a science project, looking at hydroponics as a need for survival in many communities. Through this project, our 5th graders are growing from germinating their own plants through a study of hydroponics and with our own aquaponics station on campus. Students germinated seeds together and learned about the concept of hydroponics in our own environments. Then, they spent time planting the seedlings of either Mānoa lettuce or Anuenue lettuce in either a soil-based or a hydroponics-based system. We made predictions about which system would lead to better growth. Once planted, we are already beginning to collect data about growth.

Next, our 5th graders had the opportunity to head down to Weinberg with Mr. Falk’s Museum Studies students and Dr. Pennington’s tech students, to learn about 3-D scanning and VR technology. Students rotated through stations where they experienced VR headsets and activities and got to be scanned with the 3-D scanners available to our students.

Finally, 5th grade had the opportunity to collaborate with Mr. Charles Wade’s IB Physics class to learn about the physics behind bridge building from the high school students. We got to go to Mr. Wade’s classroom this year, giving our 5th graders the opportunity to work in a high school lab rather than in our usual space. They started out by getting to know one another and then working on a digital simulation of bridge building. We then returned to Mr. Wade’s class to actually build bridges out of popsicle sticks and tape, then tested them!