At panera right now with Katie! Great meeting!!

Hey guys, sorry I have not posted anything, I've had some computer problems this week.
When will be a good time for us to meet up this week? I think for us to do the podcast, we should meet up and do it.
If you guys are available on this Sunday, that would work for me!

Has everyone decided what portion of the podcast you want to do? I'm going to explore it this weekend to see what it's all about and how difficult it may or may not be.
Also, can we possibly set a date to meet & talk about this project? I'm afraid that things are going to move pretty quickly here over the next few weeks & we need to make sure we've got our ducks in a row and are on the same page. Are you guys going away spring break week? I would be available that monday, tues, or wednesday to meet up. If you're going to be gone, then I could meet sometime next week, tuesday or thursday morning. Just let me know!

Katie

Hi ladies, it's midweek and we don't really need to collaborate this week on the project because our assignment is not part of our project directly. However, we still need to show some communication to get our points for the week. So I thought we could discuss about our podcast due next week. We all have to take a different portion of the assignment to talk about. Our audience is our student's parents - the podcast is for them, to update them on our project. If you don't mind, I would be willing to discus why we are choosing to do project based learning and the benefits of it. What do you guys think would be valuable to share?

Important Question: In last week's project, we indicated that we were going to gear this toward's 5th graders  due to the complexity of it all. There wasn't a time at the beginning of the project where we had to review GLCE's - we thought it didn't necessarily matter for this particular project. However, as I go into Taskstream & look up the GLCE's, first grade is where all the weather and weather measurement standards are. Third grade talks about weather & concepts, but not in detail like 1st grade. 5th grade has NOTHING that would work for clouds, like I chose. Now, I could change my topic, but if we need this to match to a GLCE, we might need to reconsider our overall plans (esp w/ predicting weather) for the other students. What thoughts do you guys have? Cuz we all need to move forward w/ this and make sure our lesson is geared for the right age students. Thanks!

Hi Guys! I'm going to choose to have the students research about clouds and probably create a cloud chart for my lesson plan this week. Any thoughts as to what you might cover?

Module #5 Lesson Plan

Great job everyone on getting all this work done before midnight!! I am really happy that were able to work on this project as efficiently as we have been! I know Katie mentioned in another post about this week's assignment but we can make a new post for it! 

So we have to use Taskstream to create a Lesson Plan from our "Big Project" Each of us have to do a different lesson plan topic so while looking at the concept map, you can chose which part of the weather station you want and comment on this post which one you plan on using. This way we don't all have making thermometers!

Also, Connie emailed us back about the concept map and said its good to go! 

Go team Weather Monitoring!!

-Rebecca

Part B - Google Map

View Larger Map The route that we chose as a group is from South Haven, MI to Kalamazoo, MI. We want to show our Epals in Sydney factors in which our weather is affected in Kalamazoo. We decided to use the route from South Haven to Kalamazoo because of Lake Michigan’s lake effect. This causes our weather patterns, especially in the winter, to change in variations because of the lake’s cold water causes the colder air to create more snow that travels towards Kalamazoo. Our Epals in Sydney would also show us a route that has a factor that affects their weather such as mountains, bodies of water, or terrain.

Part A - ePal Project

Virtual Pen Pals

Updated Concept Map

Alright here is the newly updated concept map for our Weather Station Project!

Concept Map updated

This is the updated version of the concept map.... what do you guys think of it? The original is still saved on the bubbl.us site. Taking in what Connie said in the email, we got to think of a project that can be done in the classroom and that is ongoing. 

If you guys both like it or want something to change, let me know. I can email it tonight to Connie and CC you guys!

-Rebecca

This week's assignment

Hey everyone!

Katie and I were able to meet today at Panera, after a while of trying to find who each other was. We were able to brainstorm a lot of what we are doing for our project. Our "Big Project" will be building a Weather Station. I am going to change the concept map and use weatherunderground.com to see what a weather station entails. Katie has created the google doc for the assingment this week and she has invited us to that document. Katie and I have discussed the answers to the assignment but Kathyrn, feel free to add your input! 
I will be doing the google map. We searched for weather stations in kalamazoo and then we searched for ones in South Haven. We want the route to show how Lake Effect travels to us in Kalamazoo. We would have our pen pals do the same by them showing us an area that affects their weather as well.
Kathyrn, if you are able to upload the questions answered on the google doc onto the blog, that would be great!

Katie-- I haven't received the email invitation to the google doc in my email so if you could send it again to Rebecca.m.kowalski@wmich.edu that would be great! 

panera

I feel that we re on a blind date... i am at a table by the window