Category Archives: 6th Grade Tech

Breakout

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As you may have known, we did a Breakout in Tech. If you don’t already know, a Breakout is where you have to break codes in order to open a message or a safe box. I’ve done them before in Science and Social Studies sometimes.
It was a lot of fun – especially with my special challenge. At lunch, my friends dared me to talk to only ONE person during the whole period of Tech. I like to accept challenges so I agreed. Of course, my friends wanted to make it hard by picking a person I wouldn’t usually talk to.
When the Breakout started, I realized that I wasn’t in the same group as the person I had to talk to. Then, I asked one of my friends if I could switch sides. She said yes, but when I started helping out the other team, they thought I was spying on them to see their strategy. I had to explain, but I had to do it through the person I had to talk to. I had to say, “Tell the rest of the group that I need to be on this side to do a dare and I’m not cheating.” They were still a little suspicious but it didn’t matter because I won the game for them.
On the lock box, there were three locks. The other group had the same thing, except no one knew which one had the key we were looking for. There was also a lock box that any group could unlock which helped unlock all the locks faster. The first thing everyone did was look for clues. I didn’t find anything, but I helped out when others found some.
Later, on one of the clues, I saw a pattern of LED lights in a maze. We already used that clue, so everyone ignored it. I knew it had to mean something, so I followed the path a counted the number of LED lights. Then, I went over the the locks on the lock box. None of them were number locks. I looked at the other lock box with one lock and realized it had to be it. I punched in the code and pulled the lock. It worked! I showed everyone and they were amazed. I couldn’t really explain what I did but it didn’t matter.
Inside the box was an invisible ink flashlight. Our teacher told me to flash it on one of the papers. In invisible ink was an arrow pointing to a circled word. We quickly put in the code and opened the box. We had the key! “Well done everybody!” said the teacher. I completed my challenge and helped out my team. I couldn’t have had more fun.

Thoughts about Starting Tech

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I was pretty excited for Tech because I remembered that my brother made really cool things. I always love to create things and invent, so I know I will have a great time. There are also a lot of cool tools that I’ve always wanted to use to create things that are now available to use.
On the first day, we went over the units and things we will be doing. Everything sounded fun and cool, so I am excited. Also, the teacher, Mr. Calvert, seems very nice. He also does a lot of cool things that I also like – for example, making games and building things in Tech. Another thing I like about Tech is the kind of iPad/Chromebook. It’s really cool how the Chromebooks we use are also able to be flipped into an iPad.
On the second day, we went over safety rules. I agreed 100% with all of them and I was thinking that a lot of kids would probably break them. Our class has some kids who like to fool around and not get work done.
On the thrird day, we did a Breakout. Breakouts are games where you have to break codes and unlock locks in order to open a safe box or message. That was a lot of fun. On that day, some of my friends gave me a challenge to talk to only one person during the whole class. It was hard but really fun. I had to open some locks by myself and then it was hard to explain it, but our team still did really well.
The only thing I don’t like about so far Tech is that it is too short of a class and I want to have more time to have fun. I guess I will have to deal with it for now.