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!

Monday Made It - GUTS apron

Good evening friends! Just a quick post for my super fun Monday Made It link-up with Fourth Grade Frolics. I actually had several "made-its" but they failed to get properly photographed. I guess that just means I'm sure to have a post next Monday too!

The lovely ScienceWear.net (who we bought our Lunar Cycle t-shirts from) sent me of their GUTS aprons. I was so excited to start painting it, but it took me awhile to get it done because I was not sure what colors to do. I've seen some great ones, but I decided to go with more realistic/anatomical model colors. I LOVE it! I'll be wearing it for all our science labs, even if they aren't messy ones!

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!

Lunar Cycle T-shirts

Don't you hate it when you find something amazing, usually on Pinterest, and it's too late for that school year...and you have to wait a whole year to do it? That's what happened with these amazing Lunary Cycle T-shirts from ScienceWear.net. I first saw them last year and knew we had to use these as part of our study of the Phases of the Moon. These t-shirts are only $5 each and come blank, ready for students to color in the phases with glow-in-the-dark fabric paint and add their own style to the rest.

So, this year I was ready! 4th quarter is my favorite because we study my two favorite topics in science (space) and social studies (the American Revolution). To learn about the Moon Phases we created Phases of the Moon Wheels that we put in our interactive science notebooks, stuck our heads through our moon board model, listened to the Phases of the Moon songs from Songs of Higher Learning, and some watched some Bill Nye the Science Guy. 

Then it was time to get crafty! The students colored in a rough draft and then we clipped our shirts to white boards, used sharpies to shade and label the phases, and then got creative with the fabric paints. 

Last week we took the entire 5th grade to the Science Center and Planetarium and we all wore our amazing pieces of science art! Our kids had a great time exploring the different areas of the science center and we were treated to a Tour of the Solar System in the Planetarium.

We got a lot of great photos of my kids in action, but unfortunately the photos didn't really show off their shirts.

I didn't have a chance to finish my Lunar Cycle shirt, but wanted another occasion to wear my "Back in my day, we had NINE planets" shirt that I picked up from SnorgTees that I had ordered just for our study of space. 

I'm still smiling - and this is after the field trip - maybe because I survived!

And...here is a bonus video of one of my girls being hilarious on the bus ride back to school.

Simple Machines and Rube Goldberg Inventions

I love science. I love teaching science. But sometimes it takes a lot of extra time and planning to make great science lessons. We are currently working on our Force and Motion unit and we just learned about simple machines. I introduced them with this shutterfold foldable.

Together we took notes on each of the simple machines and coming up with examples of each. Then, I showed them these Rube Goldberg inspired videos:

Honda's "The Cog" video - a Rube Goldberg invention made entirely of (CGI) car parts. 

"The Page Turner"

Ok Go's "This Too Shall Pass" music video. 

And just released this week...

"Girls" from GoldiBlox

I explained to the class about Rube Goldberg and his inventions and showed them his Pencil Sharpener. Warning: some of his inventions are not quite school appropriate (i.e. smoking/alcohol), so preview them before showing kiddos. 

We were inspired to design our own inventions. I encouraged them to use at least three simple machines in their inventions. Here just a few of the creative ideas from my class. 

I was out for two days last week at a district training and my kids finished these up with the (amazing) substitute. I was very impressed with their thoughtful and creative inventions, and they were all excited about them as well. I added the Simple Machines Shutterfold to my TpT store for anyone interested in adding these to their Interactive Science Notebooks.

A bit of this and that and . . . a Flash Giveaway!

It's amusing to me that most teachers have either just barely started the 2013-2014 school year, or are starting tomorrow. My district on the other hand has been in school for six weeks already. Last week we had parent teacher conferences! Prepare for a jumbled post, but don't miss my flash giveaway somewhere in here, it's your reward for wading through!

So far, the first month and a half of school have come and gone in a blink of an eye! I'm sure this is due to the fact that we are busy, busy, busy! In less than two weeks we are off to our JA BizTown simulation, so we have been engrossed in our lessons on financial literacy, learning how to write checks and balance a checkbook, and applying for jobs. I'm so excited and I know that my kids are going to love it!

I am absolutely loving Reading Workshop. I know I'm not doing everything "right", but already I know that my students are loving reading and really value their independent reading time. I'm still shaky about the grading portion of reading workshop, any tips?!?!

Parent teacher conferences good not have gone smoother. I love the families that I get to work with. Most of my conferences were just chatting with the kids and their parents, and my cheeks were hurting from the smiles and laughs that we shared. It's good when everyone (parents, kids, teachers) can discuss a child's progress as a team! Not to say that I don't have any issues, but those parents were nothing but understanding and supportive.

I've been so busy working with my lovely class that I haven't had much time to take photos. This is my goal for next week so I can have a proper post!

My TpT to-do list has also been neglected. But the day off has given me a little extra time so I was able to update one of my projects. I love the Biography Study of a Scientist project that I started a few years ago. It is a mini-research project that I have completed with both my 6th and 5th graders that allows them to find out, and share with the class, about scientists who made important discoveries that have impacted humankind. I had forgotten that I purchased Lita-Lita's lovely science clip-art set during a sale and was thrilled to have remembered it.

In this mini-research project students are each assigned a different scientist (I include a list of 35 suggestions with links) and complete a few tasks such as: drawing a picture, providing basic biographical information, and explaining the scientists major accomplishments. It's great to put all of the completed projects together into a class book - perfect to add to your non-fiction section of your class library!

If you have previously purchased this you can now re-download it with the added graphics as well as a score sheet for grading the projects. Would you like this project for free?! I'm going to have a flash giveaway! Just comment below and tell me who your favorite scientist is and why and be sure to include an email address. Get your entry in by the end of today, September 2, and I'll randomly choose 3 people to receive the Biography Study of a Scientist project! 

I hope everyone has been enjoying the three-day weekend! Mine has been interesting! On Saturday I met a teacher friend at Starbucks to chat and grade papers. These are words you don't want to hear while sitting in Starbucks: who owns the little blue car outside, because your going to need to take my insurance info. A very large Dodge Ram didn't quite make it into the parking spot next to my little blue Versa...

He certainly snagged it - but I was very chill about it and thankful that he was honest and did the right thing. He didn't even wait for me to put the claim in, he beat me to it!

Yesterday I was lucky to have a visit from my sister, nephew and niece. We did a bit of swimming and my sister captured this great photo! 

A couple of other shots from the past month...

My BFF invited me to her Bikram Yoga class. As you can tell from the photo, I survived, and it actually wasn't that bad! Next, a cute photo of my ratties! I bought them a ginormous cage a few weeks ago and they are loving their new mansion. And finally - cute gifts from my friend Laura (who is also the school librarian and I'm lucky to have her awesome son in my class this year). The chevron calendar is just right for my teacher binder and the "write" notebook is getting me excited about NaNoWriMo!

Phases of the Moon

We've been studying the phases of the moon for a couple of weeks and it has been a lot of fun. The students have been keeping a moon journal for the month and will finish up a complete moon phase this week. Then we get to cut it out and make it into a flip book!

I explained the moon phases with the class and they each created a moon phase wheel in their notebooks. Anything that involves cutting, gluing, and brads seems to be much more interesting to students (and teachers!).

 Then, I blew their minds! It's difficult for students to understand that the moon always has a light side (that reflects sunlight) and a dark side, and that it doesn't rotate like the Earth does. A few weeks ago Teachingisagift serendipitously posted her moon phases board and I knew I HAD to make it. Unfortunately my Dollar Tree wasn't stocked as well as her's, so I ended up with a blue foam board and ping pong balls. I used dark blue paint to paint one half of them and then hot glued them around a circle I had cut in it (a big mixing bowl worked great for a stencil). And the result was fantastic! All you do is stick your head in and...instant moon phases!

It was difficult to get decent photos, I think the florescent light in my room is making the photos funky. But you get the idea. 

Next we found the Moon Phases Rap on YouTube and the students love it! We've played many times and a student will randomly burst out in song during the day. Needless to say it's been stuck in my head for several days. I even had a group of boys buy the song on iTunes and tell me they had it on their iPods! The class wants to sing it in our year-end talent show...we'll see if they can get it memorized! 

I'm totally behind on TpT projects (sorry to anyone waiting for the next version of Calendar Math!!! I haven't forgotten!) but I keep getting distracted by mini TpT projects. This was one of them...

Science Performance Assessment

Performance assessments are the ideal way to assess students. Unfortunately it isn't always practical. I know I don't do nearly enough performance assessments, but science is the perfect for this!

I think I've already mentioned before that this quarter is my favorite because we get to learn about the American Revolution in social studies and Space in science. Last week I demonstrated the Earth's rotation, revolution, axis, and explained day/night and the year. We also went over the moon's revolution around the Earth (we'll get into the phases more soon).

Today we reviewed and each group got a beach ball and ping pong ball to practice with.  These photos are intentionally blurry because they are ACTION shots!

This student was demonstrating the rotation of the Earth on it's axis. 

This student is acting as the sun with the Earth revolving around him!

Tomorrow I'll be pulling each student aside to assess them as they demonstrate each of the concepts we practiced. My rubric is pretty basic. I may spiffy it up for TpT, but regardless it'll be a freebie. So, if you want it now, here is the Google Drive linky. 

Do you use performance assessments in your classroom? Please share, I need more ideas! 

Biography of a Scientist

As a part of Arizona's Science Standards students are to learn appreciation for the scientific advances that have been made, and to recognize those important scientists. Our Harcourt Science book has a fantastic online library of biographies on many such scientists. I thought that a fun and short assignment would be for each student to learn about one of these scientists, fill out a mini-biography on him/her, and then share with their classmates. Once complete, I bound all the biographies into a class book that we keep in the non-fiction section of our classroom library.

This two-page printable and list of 35 scientists is available in my TpT store for a mere $1!