As we began to learn of the 4-quadrants on a coordinate plane, in preparation for 6th grade, we played Battleship today. Each student drew six ships on their coordinate plane. Then, using the quadrants, they guessed at where their partner's ships were placed. Tomorrow we dig into the book activities on the same concept.
Unable to do the school's usual art show, our school decided to connect art into being thankful for something in the community. Our class chose to be thankful to the USPS drivers during Covid, and staying true to delivering the mail and packages to all of our doors. Thanks USPS! We all made cards and a giant sign to give to USPS.
While learning about the three branches of government in class over the past few weeks, we were able to take advantage of having a local judge, Judge Pearson, talk to our class about the judicial branch on Wednesday through Zoom. I was so proud of the students, as they had taken great effort in writing good questions to ask him for the last twenty minutes. The judge mentioned twice how impressed the questions were. Students surely walked away from this experience knowing much more about our judicial system.
We started our forces and motion unit, which really looks at how gravity impacts objects at a 5th grade level. We built straw rockets and launched them this week, collecting data and making observations on their flights.
Today was our final day of learning skills for basketball. We finished the unit with 4 on 4 scrimmages.
Today we looked at the relationship between a concentrated solution and its density. Students investigated 4 mystery solutions to determine their densities and rank them in order. To do so, they tried layering the liquids in a straw so that the lightest (least dense) liquid was on top and the heaviest (most dense) was on the bottom. Students were surely engaged! Now, they know that if a balance or scale isn't around, they can use density to find the level of concentration of a solution.
We had our annual Digit of Pi Memorization Contest today, a few days before Pi Day (March 14th is over Spring Break this year). It is amazing how many digits students can memorize in just one week. First place went to Carys, who memorized and sang the first hundred digits of pi and then recited another 17. Yes, she memorized 117 digits of the number. Second place was Chayse with 98 digits. I'm so proud of all the students in the class, as each and every one of them know more digits of pi than most people, as math classes usually only focus on the first 3! Even fifth place memorized 83 digits of the infinite number.
