Spring Wall 2015

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Our Dead Word Cemetery

Inspired by the "Dead Word" post on this blog HERE, we buried over nineteen words in our Dead Word Cemetery.

To figure out which words we wanted to "bury," we had a whole-class discussion about what type of words we tend to overuse in our writing. Then someone mentioned how a thesaurus could help us find better words to replace the "dead" words, so our writing could be more detailed and specific. 

After we created tombstones to honor the words we planned on using less frequently, we shared our tombstones with the class and found a place for them on our classroom door. 

CLICK HERE to see our Dead Word Cemetery from 2012-13. 

The entire cemetery (including background and tombstones) were created, hung,
and maintained by students in our class. 

Fizz Inflator

During our study of chemical changes, we did an investigation from ScienceBob.com called the "Fizz Inflator." Through the investigation, we were able to see how two different types of matter (vinegar, a liquid, and baking soda, a solid)  combine to create a new type of matter: carbon dioxide, a gas. Since the vinegar and solid reacted together to create a new type of matter, this is an example of a chemical reaction. 

As a result of the carbon dioxide, we were able to inflate our balloons! 

Verb Snowmen

To help us review verbs, we generated verbs with our partners and created verb snowmen using Tagxedo (a word cloud website). This project helped us re-familiarize ourselves with the types of words that are verbs and categorize verbs based on the three main types of verbs: linking, helping, and action. Action verbs are verbs that show action in a sentence (examples: jog, smile, bend, yell); linking verbs are verbs that connect the subject to extra information about the subject (examples: is, are, was being); and helping verbs help the main verb show different tenses (examples: is looking, are moving , were walking, will be asking). 

 

Constitutional Powers

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Vokis: How Matter Can Change

Matter Molecules... and Slime!

Lately we've been learning a lot about matter in science. To help us understand the different states of matter, we transformed ourselves into solid, liquid, and gas molecules and worked as a class to "become" these different states of matter.

Here we are as a bunch of solid molecules, packed together tightly
that we kept our shape as one class solid!

When we morphed into liquid molecules, we broke apart,
stayed somewhat near each other, and occasionally bumped into each other.

As gas molecules, we moved about very freely apart from one another
 and rarely ever bumped into each other.

Later in the week, we created slime to help us understand the different properties of a solid and a liquid. Since slime is a special type of matter (a polymer) it has qualities of both a solid and a liquid. For example, you can hold it in your hand like a solid or it can take the shape of a container (a baggie) like a liquid.

Huge thank to @ScienceBob for the slime recipe we used, which can be found HERE.

Our Winter Holiday Trees: Bright Book Recommendations and Proper/Common Noun Candy Canes

For the outside of our classroom door during the month of December, we created this winter holiday tree full of our "bright" book recommendations. As you can see, we used neon construction paper to design our light bulbs and we wrote our book recommendations on the bulbs. 

I (Mrs.Allen) have looked everywhere for where I originally saw this idea, but I can't find the post or the tweet. If you happen to come across it or are the person who originally thought of it, please comment below and I will gladly give you credit. 

Both the tree and the light bulbs were created and hung by students in our class. 

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For the inside of our classroom door, we created common and proper noun candy canes to review nouns in a fun and festive way.

The tree and candy canes were created and hung by students in our class. 

**All pictures were taken by students in our class.

Equivalent Fractions Turkeys

Lately, we've been focusing on fractions quite a bit during math. After we learned how to generate equivalent fractions by multiplying both the numerator and the denominator by the same factor, we collaborated with a partner to create equivalent fraction turkeys--which we thought was a fun way to practice (way better than a worksheet). After this activity, we also learned we could find equivalent fractions through division, which made it easier to learn the concept of simplifying fractions!