Happy Holidays!

Just something to spread a little cheer.

And another

Wishing you and your family a happy and safe holiday break.

Whole Lot of Cardboard!

Hello to all!

Inspired by the viral video "Caine's Arcade", the 5th grade class created an entire cardboard arcade! We learned about the engineering design process (constraints, the need to redesign, teamwork and consensus building, testing, etc.) while we constructed with cardboard.  The fun games and activities designed by the 5th graders were realized in the CLIC room with Mrs. Condon. Watching the imagination and creativity of 10 year olds take flight was truly inspirational. Take a look.

Trying out a game

Making an air hockey table

And trying out the air hockey table--it even has score cards!

                                                                                                 

Working in CLIC on a race course

             Mini golf anyone?                                                                                                       

 Skee Ball!

 And at the end of the day, everyone had a good time, learned the value of working together and making compromises, and understood that engineering is not a "once and you're done" proposition.

Erosion Models Are Awesome!

Now that spring is here, we can work on science labs outside!  Today was perfect for that.

If your student comes home with muddy knees, please forgive them.  We were working diligently on creating erosion models and had to get down on the ground in order to make them work.  Scientists use models to study processes that happen too slowly or on too large of a scale to observe directly.  And so, working in small trays with mud, water, rocks, toothpicks, and spray bottles works well for us to "see" erosion first hand.  We created deltas, carved caves, and smoothed out mountain tops all within a 30' by 15' space and in only 45 minutes!  Ask your student how they eroded today.

Coordinate Grid Games

We've been studying coordinate grids and line plots in math.  While it's difficult to find games on the Internet involving line plots, there are many games to practice plotting points on a coordinate grid. Below are links to just a few.  Note that some games include working in all quadrants of a coordinate grid, positive and negative; we have only worked in the positive quadrant in class.  Have fun!

http://mrnussbaum.com/stockshelves/  uses negatives

http://www.mathplayground.com/locate_aliens.html  uses negatives

http://hotmath.com/hotmath_help/games/ctf/ctf_hotmath.swf  uses negatives

https://www.ixl.com/math/grade-5/graph-points-on-a-coordinate-plane  a little less exciting but good practice

Boston Massacre Reenactment

We are fortunate to live in an area so rich with early American history.  We walk where colonists walked.  We see the actual houses in which they lived.  And this weekend, we can experience what it might have been like to be a colonist during the events which lead to the Revolution.

Our class has been reading a short book about the causes of the American Revolution.  In coming weeks, we will continue to learn more about the Revolution in Social Studies class as well.  But this weekend presents an opportunity which only occurs once a year--the reenactment of the Boston Massacre which Paul Revere used so effectively to stir Patriot sentiments.  The Bostonian Society will be presenting a reenactment of the massacre at 7pm this Saturday, March 5.  Please visit their website to learn more (http://www.bostonhistory.org/?s=osh&p=calendar#upcoming).  With Boston so close, I wanted to share this information with you and your family to take advantage of living history.

Toilet Paper and Science??

First off, thanks to all you parents for supplying your child with a roll of toilet paper for school.  I'm sure you thought it was a curious request.  And then to be told by your student that it had to be at least 150 feet long. What could possibly be up with that?  We couldn't do science without it!  And thanks to the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco (http://www.exploratorium.edu/) for developing such a great tool to calculate planetary distances.

What is all of this about?  Toilet paper?  Distances?  Science?  How can all of this go together?

Over the past few days, we've been building toilet paper solar systems!  Yes, that's right.  Our entire solar system (including lowly dwarf planet Pluto) on a roll of toilet paper.  The Exploratorium started us off with a program to calculate the relative orbits of all of the planets if the sun was the size of a 1 cm cube (about the size of a pea).

We quickly realized that measuring each time from the sun out to each individual planet would take way too much work. (Would you want to measure out 43 meters all the way to Pluto?!)  There had to be an easier way.  Fortunately, there was.  Using the measurements that the Exploratorium program provided, we could calculate the distance between planets.  This fit readily with our study of decimals in math as we had to convert from hundredths of a meter into meters and centimeters.  Lots of decimal subtraction, understanding of place value, and rounding ensued!

Then came the measuring!  And teamwork.  And figuring out how you can measure out 11 meters in the classroom when eight other teams of students were trying to do the same thing without moving all the desks and chairs out of the way!  Could it be done?!  Of course!  Fifth grade inventiveness and teamwork really kicked in.

We will finally get to unroll our solar systems (and add asteroid belts) next week.  We will need a whole lot of space to do that.  There is only one place in the school where we can do this, and it's not the gym.  In the meantime, enjoy these photos of our solar system building in action.

Measuring with a partner--one person measures, the other holds the place.

Using teamwork in a confined space.

How far to Pluto??

CLIC Light Lab

We recently wrapped up our unit on light energy with a visit to CLIC. Students had an opportunity to work with light in hands-on experiments using lasers to understand how light acts in fiber optic cables. Mrs. Larussa explained how these properties of light have implications in our everyday technology (cell phones, Internet, cable television just to name a few).  Pretty amazing to think that the seemingly simple stuff we study in 5th grade science has application to the real world.

         Light moving through a stream of water.  The light follows the path of the water.

Observing light reflecting through gelatin "fiber".

Change Is Simple

     Today we had educators from Change Is Simple visit our classroom to teach us about energy--where it comes from, how much different appliances in our households use, and what we can do to not waste it.  They brought hands-on activities to really help the students understand the value of energy.  Did you know that a hairdryer uses almost 1300 watts??!  That's about 100 times as much energy as an LED bulb.  And a small, handheld vacuum cleaner uses over 200 watts.  It makes you rethink using a simple broom or dust mop to clean your floors.  And cranking up enough energy to light a standard incandescent bulb takes a lot of hard work!

     Change Is Simple will be visiting our school periodically until the end of the school year, bringing more hands-on opportunities to learn about energy and what simple changes we can make to impact our world.  Check them out at their website http://www.changeissimple.org/

Cranking away to light a 60 watt incandescent light bulb!




Patrick showing us a "model home" and where we can save energy.
















Gillian using a wattage meter to show how much energy is used by different common appliances in our homes.