Last Thursday, after weeks of creating and practicing, we presented our Poetry and Art Night to an audience of family and friends of the Grade 5 class.  It was a wonderful evening and gave each student some time to shine in the spotlight.

The first part of the evening was an open house where family and friends could enjoy refreshments as they explored the different creative stations around the room.

Everyone also had a chance to admire the art portfolios on display and read the poetry in the portfolios in front of them.  Each student was responsible for their own folder and portfolio and chose their favorite peices to display for both of them.

Then the program began with the Grade 5s presenting their own poems as well as their favorite poems written by other authors.  Two brave Delvers, George and Dawson, were our master of ceremonies for the evening and Quinn ran the powerpoint for the presentations.

I was so PROUD of you all!!!

Wow!  I didn’t even notice we had broken the 1,000 mark on our visitor tracking map until a student excitedly pointed it out to the rest of us.

When I first started blogging I planned it to be a great way to connect with parents and a way to give them a window into their child’s classroom.  As I look back, I realize it has become so much more than that which is an unexpected joy!  Here are a few highlights of the different ways our blog has helped us grow and learn:

• We studied world geography and discovered countries that some of us were not familiar with.
• We learned how to read and graph data from our visitor tracking site.
• We connected with a global community which has helped make current events from around the world more alive in our classroom.
• We created videos of our learning to help teach others different math skills.
• We have designed our own student blogs and have been held accountable to a higher level of writing as there is now an audience besides the teacher.

What is an unexpected way that blogging has helped your class learn and grow?

It’s been such a joy learning to blog from a talented community of educators.  Thank you all for your support, visits, and comments!

Photo Credit: 13th Street Studio

The Delvers have been working on a scientific skills mini-unit and we have been watching, reading about, and doing, a number of experiments to practice our skills and learn about variables.

Today we made our own lava lamps and I was suprised how simple they turned out to be.  I got the idea from Science Bob’s website which has been a great source of inspiration in this unit.  He has a number of experiment ideas and provides a “How it Works” summary for most of them.

First we created three lava lamps in different sized bottles.  We wanted to test to see if the different sized bottles would produce different amounts of blobs.  This experiment we did together as a class and collected a lot of data and observations which we will use to complete our lab write up, including identifying the variables.

Delvers!  I have a prize for the first person who comments on this post with the independant variable (IV), dependant variable (DV) and control variables (CV) from our experiment.

Then it was time to try it out on their own.  This part was more of a science demonstration than an experiment but it was great to hear all the excited observations, suggestions, and ideas that occured during the demo.  Check out “Blobs in a Bottle” for more details on this experiment.

This is a video of Aidan’s lava lamp in action.  You can see the tablet drop through the oil and water and watch the reaction begin.

Free online games to practice solving one step equations.

Soccer Math

Hoop Shoot

Planet Blaster

Equation Match

I love trees!  I think my favorite thing about them is that they are all so unique.  You really can’t go wrong with your representation of a tree so I decided a tree inspired art unit was in order.

Project #1 – Directed Drawing (silhouette)
Materials: card stock paper, pencil, black and silver sharpies, an image of an interesting tree in silhouette
Process:  We drew the outline of the tree and moon together as a class after practicing the formation of branches in our art sketch books.  We tried hard to remember that branches are usually thicker at the base and grow skinnier as the reach out.  We then colored in the moon with a silver sharpie.  With the black sharpie, we started at the bottom of the tree and colored in our outline which allowed the silver moon time to dry before we got there (my silver sharpies were quite wet).  Lastly, students added an animal of their choice in branches of the tree.  Here is a picture of the finished results:

Project #2 – Paper Bag Trees
Materials: brown paper lunch bag, scissors
Process:  I got the idea for this from a post on pinterest which was originally found on Pikadilly Charm’s blog.  Thanks for the great idea Pikadilly Charm!  Students cut strips into the top of the paper bag about the width of their pointer finger.  Then they twisted the bag just below their cuts to form the trunk of the tree.  Lastly, students twisted 3-4 strips together tightly to form the branches.  I loved how each tree ended up turning out so uniquely.  It was a simple, fun project and everyone was able to feel successful with their results.  Here are a few pictures:

Project #3 – Sunset or Twilight
Materials: tempera water color paints, thick cardboard, black sharpie
Process:  Students started by painting either a sunset or twilight background using warm or cool colors.  We emphasized blending techniques in this portion of the project.  While the backgrounds were drying students sketched their own tree silhouette in their art books.  Once they were satisfied with their plan, and their background was dry, they drew their outline using pencil.  They had to be careful with this as too much erasing took some of the paint off the background.  Once the outline was complete they used black sharpies again to fill in the silhouette.  Some students chose to add some details to their silhouette while others liked the simplicity of the tree against the sky.  Check out the pictures of the process and a few of the finished projects.

Sunset                                           Twilight                                        Sketching the tree

A few finished projects.

We are just starting our non-fiction research project and we will be using our blogs to post all of the information about our chosen topic.  Delvers will choose an animal that they are interested in.  Then they will research, take notes, and write paragraphs presenting the information they have found.  There are three main learning objectives for this assignment:

Students will be able to:

• write a clear, organized paragraph.
• identify & use the features of non-fiction text (table of contents, headings, diagrams).
• record sources accurately.

Click here for a google docs copy of the assignemnt.

Click here for a google docs copy of the note taking page.

Please check out the student’s individual blogs throughout this project to read about some interesting animals.

Photo Credit: www.freefoto.com

Congratulations to all the Delvers on succesfully setting up their own individual blogs.  For some of us this is a completely new experience so their is a steep learning curve.  Please bear with us as we learn how to create posts, how to approve and respond to comments, and how to manage and design our blogs.

We would love to hear from you so please look at the right side bar for links to each student blog.

Click here for the google doc of our Gold Rush unit vocabulary.

Delvers, here is your homework for tonight:

Mrs. Allen’s grade 8 students have been so good about commenting on our blog so I would like you to visit and comment on 2 of their blogs.

1. Click on this link to get to a list of their student blogs.
2. Visit a few blogs and choose 2 to leave comments on.
3. Leave a comment on 2 blogs that has a COMPLIMENT, a CONNECTION, and a QUESTION
4. Don’t forget to use your first name and leave our class website.
5. Copy down the URL’s of the two blogs you commented on and either print them out or email them to me so I can go and read your comments.

I just realized that I forgot to post about our fabulous cereal box robots.  We had a blast creating them to hold our cards and treats on Valentines day and it was a good test to see if we can visualize the end result while we were constructing.

Students brought in a cereal box and used that for the body of their robot.  First we cut a slot in our cereal box to use as the opening for our valentines day cards.  (Next time I would make sure they are a bit larger).  Then they used toilet paper rolls, cups, pipe cleaners, egg cartons, foam stickers, buttons, beads and anything else we could get our hands on to create texture and detail on our robots.

Here are a few pictures of the process:

After we finished the construction process we put on some gloves, taped up some plastic, and spray painted the whole thing with chrome spray paint.  Our Delvers were really excited to do the spray painting on their own and I was so proud of how careful and responsible they were!

Here are some pictures of the final projects: