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Monroe SMILE Club students show off their stream ecosystems!  November 24th, 2015

Monroe SMILE club students engineered stream ecosystems to meet the specific adaptations of the macroinvertebrates that they designed.  Once their streams were complete they added water to test their work!  Check out their creativity!


 


New Activity: Micro-Crossbow!  November 20th, 2015

We wanted to share a new activity with you: the Micro-Crossbow! The directions are very thorough, and it looks like an awful lot of fun! Check it out here.


Scribbler at Lincoln Elementary!  November 5th, 2015

Michelle at Lincoln Elementary School sent us photos to share of her recent Scribbler robot activity. The activity was a hit and looks like a lot of fun!

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Nyssa Family Math & Science Night. Bonus – Crossbow Activity!  October 30th, 2015

Nyssa High School hosted their Family Math & Science Night recently. They were kind enough to share pictures of their event with us. Looks like some fun learning occurred – check it out below!

The Nyssa club also did a fun activity to build a crossbow. Photos are posted below. Coming soon – another post with the activity instructions!

If you’d like us to share your club’s Family Math & Science Night or activities, send us an update with your pictures!

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Middle School Engineering Resources from August Teacher’s Workshop  September 23rd, 2015

At our Teacher’s Workshop this past August, we presented Middle School Engineering activities. See the links below for resources to bring back to your classrooms!

Teambuilding

Engineering Design Challenges

Energy Conversions Equation

Egg Catcher

Engineering Practices


Icebreakers!  August 31st, 2015

SMILE teachers, are you looking for ways to help your students get to know each other? Here is a list of icebreakers that you can do with your students at your club meetings.

 

 


2015 August Teacher’s Workshop  August 25th, 2015

During the August SMILE teachers workshop we spent an entire day learning about Oregon’s geology, hazards, and preparedness. All of the lesson materials shared were connected to NGSS with a specific focus on Cross Cutting Concepts. Check out some of the fun activities:

We also had special guests who shared resources related to geologic topics.  Here are links to their websites:

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During an elementary session, teachers learned about riparian systems and their importance to birds and other organisms and we built model ecosystems. Here are the lesson plans that support these concepts:


2015 Summer Teacher’s Workshop Bioenergy Activities  August 10th, 2015

We will be holding the summer teacher’s workshop Aug 9-11.  The bioenergy activities will focus on renewable energy.  Bioenergy is a part of the complete renewable energy picture, but how do you choose which option makes the most sense.  We will kick off the workshop by exploring best practices for engineering design projects, Designing Engineers Activity. Then, look at what it takes to power a house that is off the grid. We will use geographic information systems (GIS) to determine whether its makes sense to use Trees or Solar Panels for the renewable energy source. This will lead into design of the house to optimize solar panels and solar heating through the Solar City Activity. Finally, we will take a deep dive into optimizing solar photo-voltaic panels for maximum output with the Shocking Solar Activity. We hope to see you at the workshop.unnamed