3rd Grade Valentine Machines
Third graders at Holladay Elementary have been learning about simple machines in Science (SOL3.2) and adding and subtracting money in Math (SOL3.8). Today students in Ms. Whittaker’s class created their own Valentine machines with a money math problem for their classmates to solve. First I made a copy of a blank Google slideshow for each student in Google classroom. I showed them how to click the Background button and choose a background color. Next we moved the “Title” textbox to the top of the page, and the students typed a title for their machine. We moved the “Subtitle” textbox to the bottom of the page, and the students typed in a money math problem about their machine (adding two amounts together or calculating change). We did the written part first because that was the most important part, and I wanted to make sure it was finished. I showed them how to change the font, size, and color of their text. Then it was time to draw the machine. I demonstrated how to use the Shapes Tool to create a machine that would deliver Valentines. It could be just one simple machine, or it could be a compound machine, made of several simple machines. After the students drew their machines, they labeled the machine parts with text boxes. Finally we published them to the web (File > Publish to the web) and pasted the links to Google classroom, so we could solve each others’ problems. You can see them all here.