Matter Poster

We are just returning from a lovely two-week fall break. Teachers returned to work for a couple of days and students return tomorrow. It's great to have these two days to ease back into work and school. I had great intentions of blogging over break, but I was too busy being lazy. Actually, I was quite busy, but that's no excuse.

Before we finished the quarter we had been studying matter. We made bag bombs, elephant toothpaste, and tested mystery powders. As a culminating activity, and instead of a traditional pencil and paper test, I had the students create a Matter Poster. I just provided them with a basic set of directions and let them be creative. I had some interest when I posted this on Instagram and so I decided to make this a freebie! I LOVE freebies!

The class did a phenomenal job on their posters and they are still hanging in our room. They are all unique, yet still convey the learning that took place. I hope you find this useful with your own students. 

Cheers!

BB Part 4 - Solar System Posters

Hello, hello, and welcome to part 4 of my 10 part series, Blog Backlog: Playing Catch Up! I'm really enjoying getting to share some blog worthy things from the last month or two of school. Today I'm sharing a simple, yet easy, meaningful, and fun science activity.

My favorite science topic in 5th grade is SPACE! Here I am modeling wearing my planets t-shirt that I bought just for teaching this subject!

I was super lucky to be placed with an amazing intern this semester - she's going to be an awesome teacher soon - and she took the class outside to play with toilet paper. Well, actually, there was a scientific purpose. She had groups of students roll out the toiler paper and place a cut-out of each planet at their scaled distance from the sun. It really helped the kids get an idea how far the planets are from each other. 

Unfortunately, with all of the things that happen in our final quarter, sometimes there just isn't enough time to do as many in-depth activities in science that I would like. I needed a quick and meaningful way for my kiddos to get to know our Solar System. So, I came up with these simple Solar System Posters.

I had the students take a sheet of 17" x 22" copy paper and fold it in half lengthwise (hot dog style!) They opened it up and cut along the crease to create two long pieces of paper. They then glued these together with about an inch or two of overlap to make an even longer paper.

Next, we folded this to create 12 sections... so we folded it in half, then in thirds, then in half again. Then students labeled each section...
* Sun
* Mercury
* Venus
* Earth
* Mars
* Asteroid Belt
* Jupiter
* Saturn
* Uranus
* Neptune
* Pluto
* Our Solar System

Students used their science books to research each section of the solar system. As you can tell, the focus wasn't on just the planets, we included the sun, asteroid belt, and our dwarf planet friend Pluto! In each of the sections the students wrote at least three important facts about that part of the solar system and included a colored illustration. I absolutely loved their illustrations and they looked great hanging on the wall in our room.

I find that some of the best and most meaningful activities are projects where students get to complete their own research and use their own creativity. I hope you enjoyed part 4 of my 10 part series, part 5 will be up soon!

BB Part 1 - State Mobile Projects

Hello! Welcome to Part 1 of my 10 part series Blog Backlog: Playing Catch Up! I'm excited to get started!

Today I'm going to share our state projects. I've said many times how much I enjoy 5th grade social studies. We get to study the history and geography of our United States of America. My team has been trying to figure out how to best fit in the geography portion, which standard wise, isn't huge, but we feel is incredibly important for our kiddos to know. Last year the culminating project was a.....drumroll please...State Poster!!! So exciting - said no student or teacher - EVER. While my students last year did an incredible job on their posters, it just didn't have the novelty and pizzaz I was looking for.

I was inspired by Mr. Hughes NewYear New Me Mobiles. I've had my students create these mobiles two years in a row and I love how they look hanging in my classroom windows. It was time for those to come down and I figured a state mobile would make a beautiful replacement. So, thank you Mr. Hughes for the inspiration!

When I assigned the projects I cut up strips of paper with each state name on it and had students draw one. I took out our own state (which they studied in 4th grade) and other "popular" states that the kids knew quite a bit about already. Some were not thrilled about the state they chose, but once those projects came in, I could tell that they were excited about their project and had a new appreciation for a state they would otherwise not know much, or cared much, about.

Here is the part where I am a bit bummed out, the photos I took did not do their projects justice. I loved grading each one and reading all of the interesting things the discovered about their assigned state and the amazing art they drew.

 Don't those look lovely hanging in the window!

 Students carefully illustrated the state flag, and on the back the state bird and flower. 

 Each student had to locate the capital, two highly populated cities, and illustrate some geographical features on the state map. You can see that the title piece at the top also includes the state nickname. The back of the map included information about the state. 

 I want to visit that beautiful monument - time to travel to Nebraska!

 This was one of my favorite illustrations of an important person. I think Gerald Ford looks a bit like Kid President, don't you?

 A license plate and important person (I forgot who this is...maybe Margaret Mitchell???) from Georgia!

 This student was unexpectedly hospitalized and didn't get to put the mobile together, but he did a fantastic job!

So, that was our state project this year. It was a short, sweet, but meaningful at-home assignment. My class enjoyed completing it, and they loved seeing the projects that their classmates created. I will definitely be doing this again next year!

Interested in having your class complete these state projects as well? I've got the whole project ready to go in my TpT store.

Thanks for joining me for Part 1 of my Blog Backlog! I'll have Part 2 up in a few days!

100 Cupboards

Earlier in the school year my new teammate insisted that I read aloud 100 Cupboards to my class. She was in the middle of reading it and her class was enjoying it. I had a copy on my shelf and so we dove right in, and our class loved it too. It's definitely in the same genre of some of my favorite books (Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Wizard of Oz) and we had many opportunities to discuss literary reference and homage.

The basic premise is that Henry, whose parents have gone missing, must live with his aunt and uncle. He discovers a wall of cupboards, each of which leads to a different and strange place. There were funny moments and times that we were on the edge of our seats, and our class really enjoyed this book.

My teammate also came up with a wonderful idea to have the students create their own cupboards. Using construction paper they made cupboards that open out. Students decorated the front, drew what world would be seen when opened, and then wrote a sensory description of that world. My students were so creative and had different ways that their cupboards opened and one even devised a working latch out of paper!

I love this cupboard that has multiple doors, and multiple places that it leads to!

A Hunger Games inspired door, key included. 

Look at that impressive paper latch!

Many got creative with the shape of their cupboard doors!