Annular Solar Eclipse

After learning about eclipses, both solar and lunar, students were given a pair of solar glasses to borrow of the weekend to view the annular solar eclipse.  This is what they had to say upon returning to class on Monday:

-"The solar eclipse looked like a crescent sun. It was so awesome."- Collin
-"I really enjoyed the solar eclipse. It gives you a chance to see what happens when the sun and the moon align."- Jakob
-"What I enjoyed about the eclipse was when I started seeing the glowing ring around the moon."-unknown
-"I learned that an annular eclipse doesn't happen a lot." -Mason
-"It was cool how it happens. I liked getting to see the ring of fire!"- Unknown
-"When the moon covered 90% of the sun, it didn't effect it. It looked like a normal day."- RJ
-"It looked like a black spot with a ring around it."-Brisa
-"It looked like you were in space looking at the sun"- Keziah
-"Until now, I didn't know there were three types of solar eclipses: annular, total, and partial." -Claire
-"At the end of the eclipse, it looked like a mouse ate a little bit of the sun!"- Regan

Jessie Beck Nature Club

The Jessie Beck Nature Club began yesterday and was filled with eager 5th and 6th grade students.  With the goal of connecting children to nature while having fun with the natural sciences, the first session involved students putting together game call kits.  In all, four calls were made: deer, duck, crow, and owl.

How Much Sugar?

Students walked away from math today better able to visualize how much a gram is.  After learning how to read packaging lables, including: servings size, ingredients, and sugar content; students rotated through stations reading labels on various food products. As they did so, they weighed out how many grams of sugar are in one serving of the product.   Products ranged from Coca-Cola, Lunchables, Sunny D, milk, cereals, candies, and more.  Maybe these fifth graders will even walk away from this lesson with the life skill of being a more informed consumer when purchasing food products.

Book Clubs- By Claire

A few weeks ago we finished our book clubs.  We had three books, Maniac Magee, Among the Hidden, and The War with Grandpa.  We had read these books for three weeks, reading a few chapters each day.  We would have Bloom`s Taxonomy questions for homework.  We would pick one that we wanted to share with our group of people that were reading the same book.  We led our own discussion groups.  On Friday, we made posters of our book.  The posters had information on the front and a picture of something dealing with our book on the back.  Everyone`s poster was amazing!

Written by Claire

Reading Week!

During the week of April 2-6th, Jessie Beck Elementary celebrated Reading Week.  Students were encouraged to dress up each day of the week according to topics that fit into the "Historical Fiction" theme.  Historical hat day, favorite book character or historical character, and western/NV character were some of the topics.  Yeee Haw for Dr. Brock's class!

The Power of AIR CANNONS

While teaming up with a communications course at UNR, engineering students visited our class Friday with a challenge to build an air cannon.  Various materials were  chosen by groups of students and then they set to work developing their air firing machine.  Although we could have used more time for the competitions regarding cannon with most force, furthest distance, and quickest firing, everyone had a chance to blow out a candle using their air-zooka.

Soccer Game- By Christine

Written by Christine:

Last Friday, 3-23-12, we had a soccer game at Jessie Beck Elementary. It was the Bears V.S. Panthers. We were the Bears of course.  The panthers had their own cheerleaders, but most of the fans of the bears cheered. One of the cheers was, “Come on Bears you can do it, put a little muscle in it!”  The Bears lost 1 to 4 but we still did a good job and I bet next time we will win. J