Moon Craters

Students created moon craters with marbles and flour. They dropped various sizes of marbles along with dropping at different heigths. They learned that the speed of impact and size asteroid affect the size and shape of craters.

AG Day

We had wonderful weather for our annual Agricultural Day. The displays and lectures were all given by 8th grade students. Many of the students in our class were equally knowledgeable in agriculturally techniques. Everyone had a great time learning new things.

Broom Mates!

On Halloween our reading class was able to do some special lessons with the Kindergarten. After I read the awesome book, Broom Mates, our class helped the students sequence the events of the story. Our class had drawn some great illustration of the book. The illustrations were then placed into worksheets that the kindergartners were expected to cut apart and sequence back into the right order! Once students were done with sequencing they were treated to a great board game with comprehension questions over Broom Mates. At the very end all students were treated with a frozen witch's brew (frozen apple juice with gummy worms). Our class did an excellent job!

Moon Phases

Fifth Grade Students will be keeping a journal in their planners of the phases of the moon. I will have students place a small circle on one block for each day of the month of November. They will shade the circle to show the phases of the moon. I know that students will not be able to observe the moon every night due to weather. I will keep track myself every night and will keep track of days where it is not observable. Students will discover the phases of the moon follow a specific pattern.

Flower Dissection

The sixth grade dissected flowers to see the actually reproductive parts of plants. They read articles on plant reproduction and watched a short video on plant reproduction. All students enjoyed this lab. Being a quick thinker John suggested that we take a picture of this interesting lab. Enjoy the great photos of the students doing the plant dissections as well as playing with the left over flowers!

Reading Roosters Update

We are half way to our 100 books goal! Students have been busy reading chapter books, writing summaries, reports and taking Reading Counts tests. Once the students have read 100 books they will be treated to a huge ice cream sundae party. Please encourage your child(ren) to keep up the great work.

Field Trip-Watershed Conference

The fifth grade was privileged to attend a watershed conference. They learned many things about the local watersheds and how they are actually part of the bigger watershed-the world. Students learned everyone lives in a watershed. Students discovered that there are many sources of pollution and that everyone should do their part to help stop it. Many students were excited to see how bank erosion on creeks affects the water quality. Missouri Department of Conservation had an excellent hands on exhibit. The day was wrapped up with The Fishing Magicians. All students thought the presenters were very funny and educational. In the photo is Beverly helping with a magic trick. Matt thought the tricks were great.

Reading Rooster Buddies

Students created wonderful game boards to go along with reading comprehension questions and vocabulary cards. Students read kindergarten level picture books and wrote comprehension questions to help kindergartners gain a greater understanding. They also created cards with vocabulary words from the books. The students read the books to kindergartners in small groups and then played the fun game with them. Both Kindergartners Teachers have reported back that our class did an excellent job with their kids.

Why Read?

Our class answered the question of 'Why Read?'. Many of them displayed great comic strips with disaster results from cartoons who chose not to read. The comics were fantastic. Other students chose to interview friends and family about the topic of reading. Their articles were equally excellent explaining the value of reading. All students realized why they should learn how to read and to increase their abilities.

Leaf Projects!!!

I am so proud of all the fifth grade students! They did such a wonderful job on their projects. I have taken quite a few photographs of their projects and plan on taking more! I would like to display them on the October 4th Family Fun Night for all to see. I think everyone had fun with their project. The creativity that everyone displayed is marvelous!! Thank you for such a wonderful job...you made your teacher very proud!

Reading Roosters!

Check out our readers! They love to read and have already finished several chapter books! Laura, Shawntel, Nikki, Sandra, Tara, Kylee, Rachel, and Tianna all look completely enthralled in their books!

Euglena, Stentor Mix, Paramecium

Among all the microscopic creatures we have looked at the stentor mix is by far the classes favorite! They love watching the creatures move and eat. Some look so sluggish that students thought they were worms. They loved being able to identify the internal structures!! The illustrations are from Tara and Kylee of microscopic life.

Amoeba

Today we looked at amoeba under the microscopes. Meanong drew a great illustration of an amoeba. Students were able to see amoeba eating and moving around. Many thought they looked gross when they ate.

Tarantula Update

The previous post of tarantula death is now wrong. The tarantula was disposed of this morning in a remote location only to be found later in the day alive! It was brought back to the aquarium and treated to a feast of crickets. Many students are happy to see him back and greeted him with joy.

Tarantula Obituary

The spider, that Riley was so nice enough to bring in, has died. He lived a short but active life in our aquarium. Many students enjoyed he/she's presence in the classroom. He/she was a comfort to many arachnid lovers. Our night custodian was not a fan but non the less upset that we lost a member of our classroom. We hope that wherever our dear tarantula is now that he/she is in a better world.
Please remember that bringing in a new tarantula will not fill the void. We will just live with the memories of our dearly departed spider....and our night custodian will not be frightened to enter our room.

Reading Roosters

This week we kicked off Reading Roosters! The purpose behind this project is to get students reading! We want them to read and summarize 100 books. We will have an ice cream sundae party when both classes have read 100 books-50 books for each class. There are several students who have completed this task and are starting their second book.

Students also need to be aware that the October 18th deadline for having 15 Reading Counts points is coming up and fast! Students will also need to have their book review done too. This can be done with one of the summarized books from our Reading Rooster project.

Please keep up the great work and keep on reading!

Elodea

Our lab on elodea was a great success. Many students created great illustrations of the individual cells of an elodea leaf. Bonnie drew an exceptional illustration of a leaf showing the 'blocks' of cells.

Microscopes and Plant Cells

After reading about the differences between animal and plant cells we gathered our microscopes. We found some great mossy greens growing in a fish pond. After discovering cell walls and chloroplasts we found some cool organisms crawling around eating the plants! One look similar to a water flea. How interesting to see how small life can be! We placed a bit of the green on a microscope attached to the computer and took this photo!

Plant and Animal Cell Sketches

Today we sketched animal and plant cells. We labeled the different organelles. Yesterday we learned about cell membranes, nucleus, mitochondria, cytoplasm, and chloroplasts. The plant cell is curtesy of Victoria and the animal cell is curtesy of Jeremy. What wonderful sketches!

Leaf Project

Remember that you need to have your leaf project in by September 21st!! You should have brought home a leaf identifying packet. Good Luck!

What's the main idea?

Today we read interesting children's books and wrote the main ideas. We shared them with the rest of our classmates.

Planarian Fever

Today in Science we looked at the wonderful life of planarians!! Many students created awesome illustrations of planarians. Jason created a nice sketch and interesting observation.

Classification

Today we discovered the plants that are vascular as opposed to cellular. Wow did the celery really absorb that red dye water.

Bonjour pupils!

Welcome to fifth and sixth grade Science!! This year I plan on doing some fun and educational activities in Science. I want the students to enjoy discovering new ideas all year!!

Plant Functions

Notes by Alejandra on the basics of plants:chlorophyll, cell walls, cellular plants and vascular plants. We enjoyed learning that plants have 'veins' to transport water and nutrients.