Join the Science Olympiad Team!

The Science Olympiad is coming back to Tritt! Third - Fifth grade students can apply to Tritt's Science Olympiad Team. Students in this club will specialize in events like Bridge Building, Crime Busters, Egg Drop, Paper Rockets & more - leading to an All-County competition in mid-March and State event in early May. Practice will be on Wednesdays, from 2:15-3:30, November - March. For more information and to apply, please use this LINK by October 30th (opens in September)!

Robotics Boot Camp

Mr. Giunta and Mrs. Pascual will be offering a robotics boot camp this summer for rising 4th & 5th grade Tritt students. Camp will run May 31st - June 3rd from 3PM-5:30PM each day after the Tritt Specialist Summer Camp. For $100, students will collaborate in teams learning to build, code, and drive a robot to solve unique challenges. This is not a prerequisite for, nor guarantee of admittance into, the Tritt United Robotics Club in the fall but would allow interested students to get an idea of what Tritt's robotics club is like. A MyPaymentsPlus fee will be set up after you register. All proceeds will benefit the Tritt Learning Environment. Spaces are limited FULL! CLICK HERE to be added to the Wait List.

Robotics Team earns State berths!

In the 2021/22 season the Tritt United Robotics Club was back in a big way with 8 united teams and 24 students.. Team Zeta earned a Teamwork Challenge Award at a December Tournament earning a berth to the State tournament and an Innovate Award at a nationwide tournament in January. Team Gamma earned a Skills Award and Team Theta a Design Award at tournaments in January, also earning berths to the State tournament. Three other teams (Beta, Heta & Gamma) earned at-large berths to the State tournament in February.

Happy Spring Equinox!

What a wonderful day! Happy SPRING EQUINOX! Today we have “equal” lengths of day and night, or at least, that is what the word equinox means, and it is pretty darn close.

Our 2nd and 4th graders both studied astronomy earlier this year! Ask the former about their playground experiment and the latter about indirect sunlight and seasonal changes!

This is a great video to share with our elementary school students:

This video get into the real deal if you are curious, but it might confuse our kiddos:

Weather the storm!

Fourth grade spent the first semester studying weather factors and hazards, a new unit from PLTW. After learning how day length and the amount of direct sunlight we receive changes because of our orbit, students listed precipitation / temperature / wind as the three main weather factors, studied different climates around the club, researched different hazardous weather conditions, and then created their own narrative and solution to a weather-related engineering problem (seen below without context), the whole time recording the data during different seasons.

Eichler:

Freese:

Kappel:

Miller:

Mitchell:

Rich:

Swift:

STAR PARTY this Wednesday night!

The 4th Annual STAR PARTY with the Georgia Tech Astronomy Club has been set for Wednesday, November 6th. This is a bring-your-own telescope event, but the college students will bring some of their equipment to share as well - and can help you with yours!

We’ll be setting up on the Tritt field starting at 6pm, with a kick-off presentation at 6:30pm and observation until 7:30pm. This is not a drop off event, parents are expected to stay with their students.

In the event of cloud cover, a decision will be made the morning of on a GO/NO GO for launch.

Wild at Wahsega!

I was very fortunate to attend the Wahsega field trip with 4th grade. Students took seven classes with the amazing staff, played lots of gaga ball and other games, and experienced skits and storytelling over a campfire.

Students took an entomology class (the study of insects) where they were able to dissect some very large grasshoppers.

The best class (IMHO) was Stream Ecology. Students collected macroinvertebrates to determine the health of the stream.

Below are a few more pictures I was able to take, including of Grumpy, the alligator, who we were able to pet!

Happy Fall Y'all

Autumn is finally here! It sure doesn’t feel like Fall, but September 23rd was the Autumnal Equinox. The amount of night and daylight we experienced in that 24 hour day was 12 hours each, or equal! Every day for the next 3 months will experience a couple minutes less of daylight than the day before it.

Here is a great article with more details: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/9/20/20874986/fall-equinox-2019-september-23.

Take a look at this video for further explanation!

Congratulations on selection to the 2019/20 Tritt VEX IQ Robotics Competition Team!

The following students have been selected for this year’s Tritt Robotics Team:

5th Graders: Caleigh Bacon, Kate Bezbatchenko, Yuri Sung, Bryce Gilbert, Enzo Kukreja, Ethan Greenberg, Everett Soller, Jack Allgood, Johnny Howell, Raghav Sundar and Tristan Batherosse

4th Graders: Cayla Wise, Hailey Mallory, Julianna Crowell, Mira Ballantyne, Riley Wilhoite, Alex Moody, Charles Weiner, Fonti Fontanillas, Jack Mitchell, Jay Carlton, Kaden Brown, Nicholas Andrews and Noah Needle

Save the Date: STAR PARTY

The 3rd Annual STAR PARTY with the Georgia Tech Astronomy Club is coming up on February 13th. This is a bring-your-own telescope event, but the college students will bring some of their equipment to share as well.

We’ll be setting up on the Tritt field starting at 6pm, with a kick-off presentation at 6:30pm and observation until 7:30pm. This is not a drop off event, parents are expected to stay with their students.

In the event of cloud cover, a decision will be made the morning of February 13th on a GO/NO GO for launch.

The "Egg"le has landed!

After developing a mission to mars, 4th grade students were tasked with designing / building / testing a Mars lander. The best scientists in the world have only been successful every 2 out of 5 times with their own Martian mission. Would our students do any better with their egg-stronaut?

Burns:

Eichler:

Kappel:

Miller:

Swift:

Don't Panic!

In 4th grade we've been studying the geology of planets/moons/asteroids, and used what we learned to create our own planetary bodies with oil pastels. 

Next up we are designing our own mission to mars. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed a card game that requires the kids to choose their own rockets/communication devices/machinery/scientific tools, keeping in mind cost ($250 million) / weight / power constraints. You can play the game yourself at home using this link: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/marsbound/. 

Compounding the problem...

Fourth grade just wrapped up their Project Lead The Way unit on forces and simple machines. Each group was required to build a compound machine model that could lift a tiger 6" and set it safely in a place. The hardest part: they only had 25 minutes!

Wender: 

Eichler:

Kappel:

Miller:

Swift:

Blick: 

Wahsega. Wow!

I was super fortunate to be able to join the 4th grade students, teachers and parents on the trip to the Wahsega 4-H Center this week. Students learned about astronomy, pioneer life, survival skills, stream ecology (my favorite), and wildlife; and had fun playing games, dancing, hiking, and singing around the campfire. I can't wait to reference these times we spent together throughout the school-year as we dive deeper into each subject! 

Not so simple...

How do you rescue a tiger who has fallen into a moat around his enclosure? In 4th grade we are using this PLTW lesson to learn about simple and compound machines. Using VEX kits teams will build their own solutions! 

Here is Mrs. Wender's class building levers: 

And Mrs. Blick's class building pulleys:

There's a party over here...

... and there's a party over there. Some of our partners from Georgia Tech will be here with telescopes to share, but you are encouraged to bring your own and they'll help you set them up! Dress warmly! Parents are required to stay. All are welcome, but this is a 4th grade party!