Designing Water Filters

Dear Families,
    Over the last week we have been helping our friend Salila in India design a water filter that could be used to clean water from her local river, the Ganges River.  Salila, daughter to an environmental engineer went through the Engineering Design Process to design a filter that would cleaner polluted water by removing particles, changing the color and in an efficient amount of time.  She also made sure that her water filter was affordable. 
   Engineers on the Endeavor Team joined Salila in the challenge.  In groups of 3 or 4 we designed water filters using household objects like screens, coffee filters, cotton balls, cheese cloth, sand and gravel.  We designed our filters to be inexpensive, efficient and to remove particles and color from our polluted mystery water!  The cooperative aspect of this engineering design project went above and beyond my expectations.  Students made decisions together in fair ways, they contributed to group discussions, they held jobs, they cleaned up and supported one another in reflecting upon their design and thinking about improvements.  Each group tested two filter designs and every group designed a filter that removed particles and improved the color of the mystery water!  Enjoy the photos below!

We had an amazing time at Fort Ticonderoga!  

Looking forward to our trip on Monday to Shelburne Museum!

SCS Spirit Week!

SCS Spirit Week!

June 11-15, 2018

Monday - Dress for Your Dream Job

Tuesday - Crazy Hair Day

Wednesday - Game Day board games or non-electronic games

     

Thursday - Fancy Clothes Day

Friday - Sports Day

Multiplying Fractions, Writing Science Essays and More!

Dear Families,
April has come and went and we are in the beginnings of May!  Only 29 School Days left!  Over the past two weeks I have seen a spike in learning and stamina for hard work!  Thank you for sending your children to school rested and ready to learn and teaching them how to be respectful, polite and motivated!  As we begin Teacher Appreciation Week- I am the one who needs to say THANK YOU to all of you for sharing your children with me on a daily basis!  I learn so much from them and work hard to be a positive influence on their lives as learners and as people!  I strive to make sure to connect with my students and to push them to go above and beyond their abilities and to feel proud of all they have and can accomplish! 

Next week we will conduct NGSS Science Testing from Tuesday thru Thursday!  We would love any testing treats you can send our way- mints, gun, clementines or cheese sticks!  These treats kept us motivated throughout our SBAC testing!  The science test should be shorter and from the practice it seems quite engaging.  On the 16th our Chorus will be performing at 7PM and on the 22nd our Band will be performing at 7PM.  Hope to see many of you there!  And a bag lunch and good walking shoes, hat and sunscreen will be needed on the 18th as we head to the Civil War Re-Enactment!

In science class we have been planning and writing a 5 paragraph essay proving that the McCabe's Brook is a healthy water sources in our local watershed!  Your children have been using data that they collected in the field with the Watershed Alliance as evidence and have been analyzing the evidence in terms of what it tells us about the health of the water!  So amazing!  These essays will be finished this week and your child should be sending you a link with a voice recording of their essay!  Stay tuned!  We also have been reading about Ecosystems and practicing our nonfiction reading questioning stance. What surprised me?  What confirmed or challenged my thinking?  What did the author assume about my knowledge?

In math class we have been multiplying whole numbers by fractions and fractions by fractions!  We have been using the area model to prove our thinking and to make sense of fractions and multiplication!  We have been thinking of 6 X 1/5 as 1/5 of 6.  We came to the generalization that whenever you multiply a whole number by a fraction the product will be less than the whole number.  We have been thinking of 1/4 X 2/3 as 1/4 of 2/3.  We have come to the conjecture that the product will always be less than both fractions being multiplied.  We will keep exploring this to see if it is true!

Data Review on the McCabe's!

Caroline joined us in the classroom today to go over our data about the McCabe's Brrok!  We entered our data into a database that is accessed by Vermont scientist!  Our data will inform the state and others about the quality of local waterways!  We learned more about the relationships between temperature, dissolved oxygen and macroinvertebrates!  With a deeper understanding of what the data means we will know be able to write our essays!  Way to go 5th Graders!

Is the McCabe's Brook Healthy?

We had 3 successful visits to the McCabe's Brook!  Each visit had us focusing on one of three characteristics of this water way!  Last Friday, we focused on the Physical Assessment, meaning the location, the surrounding land and its uses, signs of human impact, velocity of the water, clarity of the water or turbidity and embeddedness of sediment.  On Wednesday we focused on the Chemical Assessment, meaning we found the PH of the water, the temperature, the amount of phosphorus in the water and the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water.  Lastly, on Friday we conducted the biological assessment.  We actively scooped and used the kick net to catch benthic macroinvertebrates.  With all of our data, we are ready to answer the question: Is the McCabe's Brook healthy?  A few short videos at the end of this post show students using the data to support their current claim about the water!  On Monday we will meet with the Watershed Alliance one more time to analyze our data!  This analysis will turn into a piece of informational writing.  We also will be able to compare data from both sites on this stream, compare them and see if they support the same claim!

Watershed Alliance Visit

Today the Watershed Alliance educators visited our classroom and gave us a preview of the tools we will use to collect data about the McCabe's Brook!  We will be conducting a physical, biological and chemical assessment to decide if the McCabe's is healthy!  Ask your child about these three assessments! 

1st Day of SBAC and Science

Your children showed tremendous perseverance, focus and stamina today for our SBAC testing.  We have started with English Language Arts.  Your open minded children enjoyed many of the reading passages and were telling me about all the interesting facts they learned about animals, history and science!  I have to say the SBAC test does a nice job of finding engaging text to use!  Nobody finished this first test and I praised them for that.  We will continue our work tomorrow with English Language Arts.  On Thursday and Friday we will work on the second part of the English Language Arts test which involves reading many passages about a topic and writing a longer informational, opinion or narrative piece!  We hope to have both tests complete by Friday!

Many of your children talked about our Matter Unit at Conferences.  Here are some photos of the experiments we did to test if kitchen substances were acidic.

We have begun our final unit of the year involving Ecosystems!  We have read many picture books about ecosystems and our vocabulary list is growing quite long.  Some of the words we will focus on are:

Food Chains, Carnivore, Herbivore, Omnivore, Consumer, Producer, Abiotic, Biotic, Prey, Predator, Cycle, Erosion, Pollution, Adaptations, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Oxygen, Turbidity, Physical, Chemical, Biological, Pervious, Impervious, Best Management Practices, Point Source and No Point Source and Watershed.  Today educators from the Watershed Alliance joined us at took us through the Lake Champlain Watershed.  We used a watershed model to explore the use of our lands in and around waterways.  We looked at how pollutants travel into our our waterways and ended the session looking for ways to reduce pollution.  

Lastly,here is a slideshow of some student writing involving the word Respect!  

Already half way through March!

I am looking forward to meeting with many of our families this week and next week!  Thank you for finding time to visit the classroom and listen to your child speak and reflect about their learning!


Here are two science experiments to spark some conversation at home about air!

What happened when I blew up the balloon?  What does the scale tell us about air?

Why does the water leave the bottle like a fountain?  What does this tell us about air?

It has been way too long!

Dear Families,

     I hope this blog post finds you all healthy and happy!  We have been learning so much here in 5th Grade and we continue to work on being a focuses, engaged, respectful and responsible class of learners!  Many of our mornings the past week have been focused around the olympics and the events that we have watched and been proud of!  We also took the time to get to know a few olympic athletes and para-olympic athletes!  We saw that many of these athletes have practiced perseverance, impulse control, precision and accuracy and resilience!  They have all faced challenges and set backs and have maintained a positive attitude as they move forward!  

We shared Valentines last week and enjoyed a few homemade treats from Kaleb and I.  We spent the afternoon playing with our 1st Grade Mix it Up Buddies!    

 We have begun a science unit on Matter (Solids, Liquids and Gases).  We kicked off our unit with a BrainPop video!  We continue to practice our note taking skills and have also been reading about matter, the three states of matter, how matter can change and how we can describe matter based on its traits/characteristics.  As a bonus, Vasanthi's class got to make Slime with Jacob's Mom!  As we made slime we noticed the traits of the ingredients, we measured the weight of each ingredient and then saw that the mass was conserved as we mixed all of the ingredients together, cool!  We also had to work as a team, compromise, listen and take turns as we made our slime!  Thank you Heather and Jacob!

 A few weeks ago we enjoyed an extra recess in the fresh snow!  Our bellies were full from a special Pizza Lunch thanks to Ella and her Mom!

In Math class we are wrapping up our Decimals Unit!  Students have worked hard to meet the goals of this unit, you can see them here!  Ask your child about it!  Thank you to those who have been encouraging your child to stay focused with Reflex!  Many of us are on our way to being 100% fluent with our multiplication.division facts!  This is a great activity to keep up with over vacation, too!

In Reading and Writing Workshop your child has been busy researching a country and working on writing an informational chapter book!  Ask your child about it!

Stop Drop and Read! SteamPunk Fashion Show by Middle Schoolers

Seven Days Feature on Rick Bessette, Shelburne Poet Laureate with our students!

Wind Energy Experiments and Writing

In Science Class we spent two days playing with mini wind turbines and collecting data and observations as Wind Engineers!  We were in search of variables that affect the amount of energy a wind turbine can produce.  Through our experiments we noted that wind speed and the angle of the blades has an affect on the amount of energy produced.  We then practiced our nonfiction reading strategies to uncover the pros and cons of wind energy in two articles and one video.  This week we will be putting our knowledge into an opinion piece of writing!  Is wind energy a good choice for our planet?

Happy New Year!

Dear Families,

 I hope you all have enjoyed the last week with family and friends!  I also hope you all have stayed warm with these cold temperatures!  I can't wait to see everyone on Wednesday, January 3rd!  Please make sure your child has warm boots, jackets and things for the next few weeks- we will  not see temps above 20 degrees for awhile!

On Thursday the 21st, our team space turned into a WinterFest!  Small groups of students researched and organized a station about a holiday celebrated around the world!  Each station had an interactive component- music, singing, craft, or game!  Students traveled through the stations getting their passports stamped and by filling the pages with facts about holidays from around the world!  This was a great way to learn about culture and to find the similarities that unite us around the globe!  

Our classroom Secret Snowflake Book Swap was highly successful!  Such thoughtful choices for one another!  I hope we all read at least 1 or two books this vacation!  Let's continue to build our reading stamina and live the readerly life in 2018!  Maybe we should do a Valentine's Day Book Swap, too!

Cookies, cookies, cookies!  I hope families enjoyed the amazing family recipes shared at our Winter Cookie Swap!  I so appreciate the time spent preparing for this fun event!  My family loved tasting all the wonderful treats!  

PS- Band will be on Friday this week!  Check the lesson schedule!