Students continued their hands-on work with electricity this week--activities included experiments with magnets, creating electromagnets, and testing the conductivity of items around the classroom.
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One of our book groups is reading "Toliver's Secret," by Esther Wood Brady. In this story set during the Revolutionary War, a 10-year-old girl must disguise herself as a boy and deliver a patriotic message hidden inside a loaf of bread. This week, our book group found their reading assignments . . . hidden . . . inside a round loaf of bread . . . One student told me: "You... baked... my reading assignment???" Another one commented on how delicious and fresh her reading assignment smelled... Language Arts was delicious! Students also built circuits and conducted static electricity experiments this week. (Did anyone catch that pun?) Work included using balloons and static electricity
to race empty soda cans. Spring has brought out the critters! Visitors to our classroom in recent days include: a Cope's Gray Tree Frog (thanks to Mr. C.), a baby turtle (brought in by Q.), and a red eft found in my backyard. Thanks to all students and families for sharing these recent encounters with the natural world. Black rat-snake skin--5 feet 10 inches... or more... Students found three young bunnies in one of our outdoor garden boxes! Student A. documented some robin eggs hatching in a nest on her porch! Updates: Mama Robin and baby; teacher measured against snakeskin, yowza!
Students acted as buyers and sellers, in a colonial marketplace activity. Students chose to pay by barter (with eggs), credit (with tobacco leaves promising a future crop harvest), or indebtedness (an I.O.U.). Shops included a candlemaker, shoemaker, joinery (wooden furniture), blacksmith, doctor's office (with candy 'medicine' to be ground up with a mortar and pestle), and grocer. You can correctly predict that the most popular shop was: the doctor's office . . . |
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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 |