Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Weighing Pumpkins

Yesterday each student weighed the pumpkin they are working with this week. 
We realized we couldn't just put the pumpkin on the bathroom scale I brought in from home. (We tried! It didn't work.) So we brainstormed as a class to figure out how we could determine the weight of each pumpkin.
Using problem solving strategies, we figured out if we weighed ourselves, and then weighed ourselves holding the pumpkin, we could subtract our weight from our weight holding a pumpkin and get the weight of the pumpkin. 

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Pumpkin Math

We have been using pumpkins to learn some valuable math skills!
First we learned what the word circumference meant and brainstormed different ways to measure the circumference of a pumpkin. Several students thought using a ruler would work so we tried that. It did not work. One student suggested using a cloth measuring tape, which was a wonderful idea except that we did not have any measuring tapes. 
We finally realized we could use a piece of string and wrap it around the thickest part of the pumpkin. Then we used our rulers to measure the string. We also estimated, counted and measured the vertical lines on our pumpkins. We compared the number of lines of larger pumpkins and smaller pumpkins. This week we will continue pumpkin math by weighing our pumpkins and figuring out their radius. 

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Benjamin Franklin Timeline

In Social Studies we have been learning about Benjamin Franklin. After completing a cyber-hunt, each student created a timeline of his life.
We took what we considered to be the most important events in his life and put them in order. Then we added them to our timeline and illustrated each historic event.
This rubric is how the timelines were graded.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Chemical Reactions

We have been learning about chemical reactions and states of matter in science class! We did an experiment to see if we could blow up a balloon without using our breath. It turned out that we could! We added sodium bicarbonate to acetic acid in a plastic bottle with a balloon on top and caused a chemical reaction. 
That reaction produced Carbon Dioxide which escaped out of the plastic bottle and into the balloon. The students really enjoyed this experiment and learned quite a bit about chemical reactions, chemical symbols and gasses. Watch the video we created to see what else we learned!



Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Phases of The Moon

                           We have been studying phases of the moon in Science!
After a reading comprehension, a class discussion and singing a catchy song about phases of the moon, students worked with a partner or small group to replicate each phase of the moon using an Oreo cookie.
Once they had created a model of each phase, they had to put them in order and label them. We followed up with a brief post-assessment. 

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Coding In The Classroom

Click here to read an article explaining how and why we will be using coding this year and how I have integrated it into the curriculum in the past. We started using Scratch a few weeks ago and will soon delve into Tynker

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

One Second Everyday

At a technology camp I attended this summer, I was introduced to an app called "1 Second Everyday" and I was very intrigued. I decided to record (at least) one second every day for the first month of school. Click below to get a glimpse into each day of our day at school during the first month.