GCISD’s First Annual District

Wide

Walk for Water

Benefitting

Who?

Anyone and ever

yone in GCISD and the community.

What?

A

1K and

5K Walk/Run. After the race, we will have free Rita’s ice, a Fun Station for

children that

includes fun water

related games, and live music from the CHHS Band and

Drumline.

Water is Basic is a nonprofit organization leading the effort to drill wells in South Sudan,

Africa to provide clean water for residents. For more information, visit

wateri

sbasic.org

.

When?

World Water Day,

Saturday,

March 22

nd

, 2014

The race starts at 10:00 am, so arrive early to pick up your t

shirt.

On

site registration: 8:30

9:30

am

.

Where?

Colleyville Heritage High School,

5401 Heritage Ave, Colleyville, TX 76034

How?

You

can sign up by going to the website below. Cost is

$15 per person and includes

your race day t

shirt.

Visit:

http://weblink.donorperfect.com/GCWalkforWater

to register for the race

or donate

!

Of

course, there is a competition!

The

elementary

, middle, and high

school

that

raise

s

the most money for clean water wells will receive

a hand

painted jerry can

to display at their

school.

•

$3.75 provides clean water for one person in South Sudan for the rest of

his/her life.

•

By signing up for the Walk, you are providing FOUR people with

clean

water.

Please join us in providing clean water for the people of South Sudan by

registering for the race and/or donating online. Together, we have the

power to

radically transform

thousands of lives!

Deadline to register online is

March 5

th

, but you can

also register on race day.

Today in STEM we got to create our 1st mortar mixture and build our 1st wall. We used our plan from Thursday to create our 1st build.

Today in STEM we finished the ASK step of the engineering design process. We started the PLAN step. We picked the materials we will use in our first wall design. We then picked the amount we will use of each material. We are allowed 3 scoops of material and 5 T of water. Then we looked at the wall movie again to get ideas for our build. We also examined the types of rocks we will use for the build. Then they designed the wall they will build on Monday. Here are some of their plan sheets.

Today for our STEM lesson we tested the mortar sandwiched we made yesterday. We created two tests for the mortar. They were the Sticky Test and the Earthquake Test. Before we started testing we did some predicting about the results based on our observations without touching. Then we conducted the tests and the results were the clay worked the best on both tests. The sand worked somewhat on the earthquake test but not at all on the sticky test. We then looked at real mortar and realized how many of the properties were like the clay powder. But we concluded that it was more gritty than the clay powder. So we are thinking that maybe we should add some sand to the clay powder.

Today in STEM we made mortar sandwiches out of the wet earth materials from yesterday. Yesterday we concluded that the wet materials were more sticky and would be better for the mortar. Today we took the 3 materials(clay powder, dirt, and sand) and put them between two tiles. We labeled them and are leaving them to dry overnight. We also decided on the tests we will use tomorrow to test the mortars stickiness and strength. We decided on a "Sticking Test" and "Earth Quake Test".

Today in our Great Wall STEM lesson we were conducting experiments to figure out which materials would make a good mortar. We were working on the "Ask" step of the Engineering Design Process. They were given bags of dry earth materials and then bowls of wet earth materials. They examined the properties of each when they were wet and dry and made comparisons. Then they made predictions about which mortar materials will work best for our wall building.

Today in STEM we went on a Wall Walk. We know that we are going to build walls with mortar just like Yi Min and Chen did in our STEM story Yi Min's Great Wall. We went on the wall walk to build our schema about the way engineers build walls today and in the past. Then we watched as short movie about walls. wall movie We created a chart with some of the examples we saw them we compared how all the walls were the same and different. We looked at the walls with mortar and the walls without and discuss how we feel our wall would be stronger with the mortar. So then we made a chart recording our thoughts on what would make a strong mortar. To extend our schema about walls and what makes a strong wall we had a  building challenge. They had to create one that was staggered like the ones in the videos and one that was stacked to test which one was the strongest design.   The children used many of the stacking examples we saw on our wall walk to help with the challenge.