building and measuring tall structures.
Work in 5th Grade this week included creating our Class Constitution (this was based on David Catrow's book "We the Kids"). We also went on our school's nature trail for a scavenger hunt, and spent time in our outdoor classroom noting the human-made things (including sounds) versus the non-human-made things. Students worked in small groups in our Math Garden, with our GRT Ms. Passman, building and measuring tall structures. Students enjoyed hands-on implementation of the scientific process, exploring which diaper could hold the most liquid! This lesson was adapted from a free lesson at Cortez's Corner, http://cortezcorner.com/2013/10/14/diaper-data. I modified her lesson, to add independent and dependent variables to the Science Experiment Write-Up page. Students were grossed out -- and thoroughly engaged! Finally, students created their first Padlet!
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Students worked to build something to decrease the melting rate of snowballs they were given, from my freezer. Another day, students worked their way through an integrated word study / math lesson with a chocolate pave cake. The cake was used visually to review diameter and radius -- but before it was brought out, students worked in small groups to find as many words as possible rooted in "pave." To collect these words, we did an experiment: students drew random cards, with one group then assigned to use a dictionary, one a thesaurus, one a laptop, and one a "Bring Your Own Device" (in this case, an ipod). We tallied how many words each group found. The least words were found using a thesaurus; the most were found using the laptop and the ipod. As one student said: "That wasn't fair! The internet gave them not only English words but foreign ones, too!" She was exactly right. After this experiment, we enjoyed some pave and then used that sugar energy to tackle math word problems based on the cake-making process. Each person divided their square of paper into fourths, then we wrote and illustrated our favorite food, favorite place, favorite hobby, and favorite animal. Finally, we placed them together like dominoes, finding points of commonality, and hung them in the hallway.
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March 2020
AuthorMs. McGill is a public school librarian at Stony Point Elementary. She has previously taught all subjects in 4th & 5th grades, and creative nonfiction at UVa's Young Writers Workshop for nine summers. Categories |