The Year's First Robotics Meeting

I am one of the robotics sponsors for Leon Sheffield.  This team is made-up of 16 students that are selected after completing an information/technology based test.  In robotics students are able to use their creativity to design and construct a robot and then program it to complete a given task.
Our first few meetings are held to set-up our kits.  This takes a LOT of time because the pieces get all mixed up throughout the year during our construction time.  However, it is important for students to begin with a complete kit when robotics starts.  Today we met for an hour and each student worked so hard to get their kits put together.

The group pictured below was the "winning" group.  They were the only group to get an entire kit completely put together today!  Way to go, guys!!

August 18th and 19th

Reader's Notebooks

Thursday we spent the day learning all about our Reader's Notebooks.  We discussed every sheet in our notebook in detail and even wrote our first entry on our Reader's Response sheet.

Robotics Training

On Friday I spent the day in a Robotics Training at Calhoun.  Mrs. Corson and I sponsor the robotics team at Leon Sheffield and, until Friday, had received no training.  We taught ourselves a ton last year but we still were anxious to improve and learn more for this year!

We were given this book

and these pieces

and told to construct our robot. 

 This is what mine looked like!

It kind of reminded me of Wall-E.

This is what my robot did...

Using a computer program, I programmed my robot to travel forward for 3 seconds, rotate the lever to hit the ball, make an applauding sound, travel backwards for 3 seconds, and then say "brilliant!".

This was a very cool training!  Mrs. Corson, Mrs. Poovey, Mrs. Farris, and myself all had the best time!  We made some really neat robots and programmed them to do some really cool things.  The training continues Saturday morning at 9.  I know we're going to learn a lot more then!

 A Sneak Peak At Next Week's Spelling Words

This week's spelling skill is suffixes.  We will be looking at words with the following suffixes:

-ous, -ful, -ly, -ment, and -less

joyous

useful

lonely

dangerous

hopeful

movement

playful

careless

freely

painful

helpless

statement

hazardous

gladly

marvelous

fearless

treatment

suddenly

shipment

harmless