Don't forget to email me if you are interested in a spring conference. I am available most mornings before school and all day on April 8. Don't forget to check out all the latest pictures on the website too: http://traceybean.weebly.com/photos.html Last week was our third engineer challenge. This week's blog will be a chance to show you some of the great creative ideas the kids came up with to solve their challenged. Third graders were working on building a better parachute. We used Lego people as our test subjects. Their ultimate goal was to have the slowest descent with two tried from nine feet up. In the video you'll see we also had some great parent helpers to perform our tests and videotape for us too! Fourth grade performed part one of a two-part challenge. The first portion required them to build a moon rover. Their astronaut (raw egg!) had to fit snugly inside their rover and then points were rewarded for every inch their rover rolled. Next time we'll use the rovers to perform step two: build a lander to hold the rover and the astronauts. Fifth graders challenges continue to look at how we explore distant planets remotely. This time they were building a device that could take a core sample of a distant planet. For the sake of our tests, the core samples were food items, but the kids were beginning to learn some of the science elements behind how to create force and store energy in a simple machine. They came up with some great ideas!
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First of all this week, a VERY belated update from our Superbowl challenge with River Gate Elementary in Charlotte, North Carolina. The week after the Superbowl, both my 5th grade math students and Mrs. Godfrey's 5th graders all collected pocket change that we donated to the winning quarterback's foundation. With a little help with rounding from the teachers, we collected $173 that was donated to the Peyback Foundation, which helps disadvantaged youth get leadership training and opportunities in all of the states that Peyton Manning has played football in (Louisiana, Tennessee, Indiana, and Colorado.) Mrs. Godfrey's class also made my class homework passes to be used on any assignment the rest of the school year. If you don't remember the fun we had, check out this previous post to see the original blog entry explaining our challenge: http://traceybean.weebly.com/blog/three-for-thursday-february-11-2016 One housekeeping item, the district has set aside Friday, April 8 as the spring conference day. I will be working that day and available if any of you would like to meet with me to check on the progress of your child in my math or language arts class. Please simply email me to request a time. If the 8th does not work for you, I am available most mornings before school, as well. Today we began our third STEM engineering challenges in class. Fifth grade math students are devising an addition to a rover that could take a core sample of the alien planet. Our "corer" is a straw and our planet is a banana, cucumber, and potato. Students have to be able to get the straw into these "alien" objects to obtain a sample that their rover could test. Fourth grade math students are designing rovers. Their task is to create a vehicle that can hold an astronaut (an egg!) and roll around to explore the moon. Lastly, third grade math students are testing safety systems. This week's system is a parachute. We are dropping our astronauts (Lego people) from a ladder attached to their parachute creations to test materials that make good parachutes and test the size of parachutes and the number of parachutes... whatever factors that will allow survival. I'll post more videos and pictures after tomorrow's completions. This week I'll just take a moment to let you know what each grade level is studying in their time with me. Let's start with 5th grade... Fifth grade math class has been all about negative numbers lately. We have looked at how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide negative numbers. They have also used coordinate grids, order of operations, solving inequalities - all involving negative numbers too. We'll take our test on this number sense chapter next week and move on to a geometry unit reviewing perimeter and area and studying volume challenges. Upon return from Spring Break, it will be PARCC testing time, and we'll be finishing the Stock Market game (which ironically ends April 15 for us!) Fifth grade language arts students are finishing up what has been a long-term Peak Project. Each child picked a topic of their choice. Then they spent the last month learning how to do research, take notes, site sources, and write a research essay. They have been having to learn how to budget work time for a long-term project. In addition, all of our work for this has been in Google Classroom through Google Docs so they have a great knowledge of how to use these features as they move to middle school. (Many Preston teachers use these formats to have students complete assignments.) All essays were due today. Next week they'll be creating a visual project that can be used to present their learning to our group after Spring Break. Please check in with your student to see how they are coming along on all of this work. Fourth grade math students are just finishing up our unit on fractions. Adding, subtracting, and multiplying fractions have all been on the agenda this last week. We'll take our test on this unit early next week, and begin a very quick unit on perimeter and area. The kids will do their last Math Olympiad contest of the year on Tuesday, March 8, too. When we return from break, just like 3rd and 5th we will enter the PARCC testing season so math and homework time will be limited. When we do have time together, we'll be completing a unit on decimals and percents calculations. Fourth grade language arts/creativity started again this week. The students will be with me during the whole month of March. We'll be reading Among the Hidden for literature circles and exploring the crazy-popular genre of dystopian literature through this book. We'll also continue our vocabulary work through our study of Greek/Latin root words in English. I think we'll have some fun with a reader's theater too and explore how reading a play is different than reading fiction or nonfiction. Third grade math class is continuing to try out the new curriculum with me. Our current unit in the enVision 2.0 text is looking at solving two-step problems involving all of the basic operations (+, -, X, /) using bar diagrams and letters in equations (AKA algebra - which they love when we talk about it because they feel so smart!) The test for this problem-solving unit will be early next week. We'll move on to a quick measurement unit after Spring Break between testing sessions. Third grade language arts/creative kids will rejoin my class again in April. |
Tracey BeanWerner Elementary Archives
May 2018
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