Holiday Research Websites

Different Winter Holidays:
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/holidays/

Christmas Around the World:
http://www.santas.net/aroundtheworld.htm

Ecstatic about Electricity!

Before I get carried away on how much fun we've been having with electricity, I have to give you a glimpse of our adventures with Maglevs. 

To finish our magnetism unit the students built their own maglev cars and this is no simple task. They tackled the challenge and did a great job!

Some students used pennies as weights to help the car balance better.

Electricity

After learning a little about electricity the students made their own potato batteries! 

They had their own voltmeters to check how many volts their potato batteries were producing.

I challenged them to get more and more volts and they got clever by cutting their potatoes and even joining their circuits together with other classmates.

For Thanksgiving, the All-Stars did a research project on the First Thanksgiving. They each presented their information to the class. We were lucky to have Lorenne's grandfather come to the school and show us a replica of the Mayflower and teach us some of the history.

Math has been all about different operations with DECIMALS. To kick off adding and subtracting decimals the students had to figure out what they could order at Subway with a $6 budget.

They hardly realized they were doing difficult math because they were having so much fun.

It's hard to tell in this picture, but the students had to create a circuit that matched a circuit that I drew on the board with schematic symbols. They all know the schematic symbols for: a wire, a battery, and a light.

A very fun STEM activity we did this week was making snowflakes. They had to "buy" their supplies and stay within a $6 budget. It was great to see them using Math and Engineering in this project. 

Making snowflakes in PJ's...doesn't get much better than that!

Magnetic Attraction

Monday morning we had a special guest come to our school and had a great assembly on physical and chemical changes. This was a fun review for the students and a great way to apply their knowledge from the first term.

They got to conduct their own science experiments and decide if they observed a physical or chemical change.

An unexpected spill! Science can get messy, but it sure is fun!

We have been having a blast with our magnet unit! Students are discovering all there is to learn with magnets and how they are used everywhere in the world around us.

This was our "Magnetic Sailling" activity. The students flipped the magnets and learned how to move the ping pong ball (which had a magnet taped on the bottom).

Mag levs! We read a story in class about a boy who lived in Japan and he created a mag lev system in his parent's store. I challenged the All Stars to create their own mag lev vehicle.

We started our planning and designing on Monday and began creating/testing the mag levs today!

Students are coming across many obstacles, but they are persevering and working hard on their project.

MATH...

We are in the middle of our division unit and so far we have learned three different strategies: repeated subtraction, repeated addition and the "Lucky 7".

Our favorite way has been the  "Lucky 7" so far but we have a few more strategies to learn, including the standard algorithm. I'm proud of how well the students have grasped division!

New fun link on the side bar!

If you scroll down the screen and go to this tab on the right hand side:

You can see there is a new link called Dance Mat Typing! This is a great website for students to work on their typing skills. This is a very important skill for students to work on since all of their district and state testing is done on a computer. Enjoy and have fun typing!

Some GREAT STEM discoveries!

A few weeks ago we were working a lot with decimal numbers and how to write, say and compare them. On Tuesday, table group #6 came up with a brilliant way to represent decimal numbers. Their task was to find four decimal numbers between 1.34 and 1.36.

As you can see they drew pictures of each number and correctly put the decimal numbers in order from least to greatest. They had one whole represented with a large 3-D cube, one tenth is a flat, one hundredth is a "stick" (tens rod) and one hundredth is a small cube. (This only works if we are clear on what the one whole is represented with). Well done!

We have moved on to multiplication now and have come up with several methods to help us solve multiplication problems.

Several students taught the class "their way" of solving a multiplication problem and we have been practicing these different methods for the last two weeks. 

  One of our many methods is what we call Lorenne's way or the "Break Apart" method.

 We just had Andrew teach us his way a few days ago, which is the standard algorithm.

Last week, we learned a lot about product research and how it correlates with what chemical engineers do. We were assigned a problem, which was to help a juice company come up with a formula for their new juice flavor: "Strawberry Orange".

Here were our top 3 choices that we voted on as a class.

We had a 4th grade class come in and vote on their favorite color. We then asked them questions to further conduct our product research.

This week, our next problem/task was to create a high quality play dough. We are working on improving different processes to see if we can create a high quality play dough that is similar to the kind you buy in the store.

We tested several different recipes and processes. Today, the students got to test out their own and see if they improved our low-quality play dough process. As you can see, it got a little messy. It sure was fun to see the students going through the engineering design process with making play dough!

After several different experiments, students had to write down the final process that they thought would create a high quality play dough. I was pretty impressed with how well some of our groups did!

Reminders: Spelling test tomorrow

Homework Club party tomorrow! 

(I can't wait to surprise my students with what we have planned!)

Fall Has Arrived!

Along with weather changes, the All-Stars have witnessed even more Chemical and Physical changes. I didn't take pictures of all of them but here are a few fun experiments we've done lately.

Puzzling Peanuts:

We experimented with different types of packing peanuts and observed what the did when they were combined with different liquids.

Some brave students tested what happened when they were combined with saliva!

Disintegrated packing peanut. Yuck!

We are now using the iPads in our class and teams were responsible with picking two different occupations and researching how that job uses the engineering design process.

Foam Gnome:

Unexpected changes in: energy and matter

Chemical change!

My brother came and talked to the class how a film maker uses the engineering design process.

Field trip to US Synthetic!

We had a great time learning about US Synthetic and all that goes into making custom diamonds for drill bits. We got to go on a tour of the factory and see each step that goes into making the diamonds.

The students got to do their own engineering activity at the end. 

Challenge: Make a tower out of notecards and tape. The tower must be taller that 12 inches and hold a stuffed animal.

We saw a lot of great teamwork and the students were doing well with demonstrating the engineering design process.

The end of First Term is coming soon. With the Holidays just around the corner lets do our best to keep encouraging our students to read and do their Homework, despite our busy schedules. Keep up the great work All-Stars!

What a week!

Success Kid

I'm proud of my All-Stars because we have had a lot of "Success Kid" moments lately. We have been working very hard in class and I've been seeing a lot of light bulbs turn on. We took a math test last week and it was great to see most of the students do so well on it.

Lets have a quick recap of the fun science experiments we have been doing.

"Fingermometers": One can was filled with very cold water and another can was filled with hot water. When the students moved their hands to the room temperature can, one can felt like the can was hot and the other cold. This helped them understand the importance of accurate measuring and using appropriate tools in science. 

 Elephant Toothpaste: Change in energy- yes. Change in matter- yes. Change in color- no (we put in food coloring). This was a CHEMICAL change! It was so fun we had to do it twice!

Ivory Souffle: What happens when you put Ivory soap in the microwave? The air bubbles in the soap expand and as the molecules heat up they move faster causing the soap to expand.

Was there an unexpected...Change in matter? Nope. Change in energy? Nope. Change in color? Nope.

PHYSICAL change!

We had several students participate in the BYU Triple Crown mile race. I was so proud of these tough kids for running so hard! Way to go!

Mr. Carr even got to pace the 5th grade boys. They sure do know how to have fun. Look at those muscles!

We had a great turnout at the carnival and students were even brave enough to have me paint their faces! I think I'll stick to teaching.

Keep up the hard work All-Stars! Parents: Thank you for all of your support and help. I love teaching these 5th graders and they amaze me everyday with their eagerness to learn and loving personalities.