Adair County Accelerated Learners
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You Can Do The Rubik's Cube

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You Can Do the Rubik's Cube consists of lessons teachers can order online at www.YouCanDoTheCube.com.  You can order a variety of class sets of the Rubik's cubes to purchase or borrow for instructional purposes.  It comes with lessons and videos for students.  The cube uses algorithms to teach students how to solve it.  The goal of this program is to ultimately send students to a competition to solve the Rubik's cube.  Wayne County is considering possibly hosting a competition in the next year or so.  We have not had one in Kentucky, yet.  We hope to participate soon!!

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This page is devoted to our classroom projects.  They are leveled for grades 2-8.  These projects and assignments can be purchased at teacherspayteachers.com or www.feelgoodteaching.com by Kerry Tracy.  They are all STEM based and use high level thinking skills, creativity, and cooperation to produce products. Students learn how to work effectively with their peers to accomplish their goals.  

Winter Waiter

The Winter Waiter challenge was a three week project where students first constructed three-dimensional objects from paper to use in an upcoming competition.  It was based on points that were totaled up when you added the area of the objects you were able to collect during a timed dining event. Participants also collected points for the number of faces per object(s) they collected.  They also counted all the vertices of every object and faces for extra bonus points.  The students also had to construct a waiter tray to hold the objects for their competition.  This tray had certain measurement specifications.  Lastly, the students competed in a variety of challenges to collect the objects including the tower challenge and floor obstacle challenge.  
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Bone Bridge
The students pictured at my left are 5th grade elementary students.  They are creating a bridge that is suppose to resemble bones.  They were given an assignment to make the bridge a certain height and length.  It also had to be sturdy enough to hold objects without them falling through the planks.

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Bone Bridge
The students to my left are middle school students.  They had the same directions for creating their bridge, but were given some different materials to make the assignment more difficult.  Their version of the bone bridge is different from the younger students above.  All teams put their own twist on their models.  I love seeing the different representations each group conjures up. 
​Extension activities include writing a paper about how real bridges are constructed using a variety of resources including the Internet, journal articles, videos, etc. 

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Tower of Terror

The students to my right are creating a "Tower of Terror."  They are required to use a 20 mini marshmellows, 6 large marshmellows, and limitless toothpicks to build the tallest, free standing tower.  The group who cooperatively builds the tallest tower, wins the challenge .  
  • Extensions are to write a scary story about the tower from the perspective of the tower itself (fiction piece).
  • The students can also do a unit of study about the strongest towers in the world, and write an essay about it.  Later, they can present their information in a group developed Power Point presentation. 

Candy Tower
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The student directly above and the one to my left are building "Candy Towers."  They are constructing towers using candy corn, marshmellows, toothpicks, etc.  They draw blueprints of the towers before they start their build.  They also measure the towers for height. 

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