The beginning of this week we have a math project involving a dream house. Students visualized this morning about a time when they have graduated high school, found a good career after college or trade school, became sturdy in their career, built up financial security and had the funds to build the ultimate dream house. Today they drew out a floorplan of their house. Many included game rooms, swimming pools, archery ranges, and other unique rooms. The next few days students will calculate the perimeter and area of each room (some will require great skill, as many rooms are not the basic rectangular shape). Following this, they will select floor samples and molding samples (from actual samples from Home Depot) to calculate the price of flooring/molding in each room. Finally, a total price will be calculated for the entire house's floors and moldings.
Today was the first of two major rehearsals for the music concert that will take place on Friday. The entire fifth grade came together to practice as one unit. They sounded great!
What a fantastic Living Museum. The class did fantastic and had many, many compliments. Some compliments came from students in 6th grade who even though these fifth graders did better then they did last year. So proud! After 7 weeks of research, writing, and memorizing the class became American heroes from the past.
Today's visit to Swope was great. Students had the chance to walk into classrooms where classes were taking place, meet teachers, visit the office, practice opening lockers, see the PE locker rooms and more. It was surely helpful for all of them and when asked, they certainly felt it relieved some stress for the transition next year.
After researching and learning about the California gold rush around 1849, students developed movies scripts that could be filmed through stop-motion animation. Day one of the assessment involved designing and building the movie sets. Upon completion of the set, students set up their cameras and began using a stop-motion app to record small movements. Eventually, students will add sound effects and voice overs for a complete, educational movie.
After observing caterpillars go through metamorphosis over the past few weeks, all are now butterflies. We have been observing them in their cage, but decided today to release them into our classroom. We have a 10% sugar water solution on one side of class and a vase of flowers students brought in on the other side of class to provide their food. It is fun watching them in our class as we work.
