Coding with Scratch in 8th Grade Math

Inspired by an array of digital screens projecting an interactive pattern simulation during our field trip to the Museum of Science this fall, MS math teacher Randi Currier, challenged 8th grade students to use the Scratch coding environment to create their own interactive art exhibits. Their task was to incorporate geometric concepts, such as angle measurements in relation to number of sides. Students applied coding skills of program structure, variable declaration, iteration and conditionals to create their exhibits. They brainstormed ideas of what makes an interactive exhibit engaging: 

• Interesting visual effects 
• Variables with sliders 
• Color 
• Sound 
• Random elements 
• Immediate feedback 

Below are the top five exhibits, voted by the students:

• Jack
• Veronica
• Veer
• Christina
• Nanako

Interactive Digital Displays at the Middle School

Middle School campus has 3 Interactive Digital Display Boards. We are excited about the new ways of sharing updates, announcements and projects with our community. To create these great looking, dynamic and interactive digital displays we use a web based management tool, Rise Vision.

MS Digital Displays:

• Terrace Level - general information, schedule, announcements, updates
• 1st Floor 7th Grade Foyer - September & October presentations

• Wellness Collaborative Week with Will Slotnick 
• Banned Books by LLC 
• Arts for Social Change Elective : Save the Turtles by Guerilla Artists 
• Andrea Pinkney, Visiting Author by LLC

• 2nd Floor 8th Grade Foyer - an opportunity to "display" / share current/past work/project: 

• Arts (Quarterly)
• Winterfest (December) 
• Film night (January) 
• Festival Play (end of April, May) 
• Spring Concert (May) 
• Musical (May) 

The morning of October 31st MS digital screens were haunted!  ....  I love remixing scratch programs. In Halloween spirit, I remixed A Song for Halloween. I've added backdrops of the MS images to create a haunted ghost effect in the school!

Full length quicktime played on all the screens

Halloween breakfast sponsored by MS parents 

Upper School Algebra 2 Desmos project

Thank you to Mariah and Christine for coming in over Spring Break to hang up the results of this year’s Desmos Project. Students in Algebra 2 and Algebra 2 Honors worked on this project prior to Spring Break. The goal of the project was for students to transform basic parent function graphs to form a picture. Students used transformations to move graphs up, down, left, and right, and to stretch or shrink them. To create their pictures, students had to restrict the domain and range on the functions in order to get the portion of the graph they want. The project was completed using Desmos which is the “next generation of the graphing calculator” and instantly plots any equation.

-Katrina Fuller