It's Spring Time!

It is finally starting to warm up, the days are getting longer, and kids are getting restless...hehe  It is spring time here.  With that comes spring break (yay!!!) and state testing (not so much a yay).

Here is the 5th grade's testing schedule for the month of April

As you can see we jump right in!  Please help your students do there best by:

• reminding them to do their best (this is a reflection of them)
• get a good night's sleep
• eat a healthy breakfast
• come to school every day

This can be a stressful time for the kiddos, please tell them not to stress because they know what they need to.  Ask them things about their day besides the tests.  

The students will dominate.  They will do great.  I have faith in them.  

Let's do this!!!!

Partner Day and Science Fair

Here is proof of our fun time with our partners.  The kids look forward to this day!  This month we showed off our science fair boards.  

Families, if you would like to see our boards and do an experiment of your own come out to Science Fair Night Tuesday, March 22 from 5:30-7:00!!!!

Partners and students catching up 

Showing off all our hard work on our science fair experiments 

Getting up close and personal 

We LOVE our cookies!

Science Fair Presentations

My example board that is displayed in the classroom

We have 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 days before students' science fair boards are due!  Yikes!  Are you guys ready?

     Once students turn in their boards they don’t just get to forget about all their hard work they did on their experiments.  To share their findings, we are going to do presentations about the experiments in class.  We will be taking a week to do these presentations.  Our classroom presentations prepare students for higher education and their future careers.  New information is presented to peers and colleagues in various forms of formal presentations.  I want to prepare my students to succeed in life.

     If you check the rubric attached to the science fair packet that was sent home in December you will see that a portion of their grade for the science fair is the presentation of their experiment.  Please have your child practice presenting their information at home to get the comfortable with talking about it in front of people.

      Students are expected to talk about the following things in their presentations:

• The question they tested
• State their hypothesis
• List the materials they used
• Explain the steps they took to test their hypothesis
• Discuss their data (results)
• State their conclusion:

o   Restate their hypothesis

o   State if their hypothesis was correct or not

o   Explain why their hypothesis was correct or not by REFERENCING THEIR GRAPH

o   Describe what they would do different next time to improve their experiment

To help students have the best presentation possible here are some tips:

• Write out the above mentioned things on a piece of paper or note cards
• Practice talking loud enough to be heard in the back of the room
• While practicing face AWAY from the board
• Encourage them to memorize the above mentioned things so they don’t have to keep looking at their board

A good speaker has some of the following qualities: 

• knows what they are talking about 
• always faces the audience
• speaks loud enough to be heard by the person farthest from them 
• doesn't have a lot of pauses or say "Umm" 

Again these are great skills for the students to know!  Thank you again for the support at home! 

MAP Science Growth

A couple of weeks ago we took our mid-year MAP test for science.  This is a checkpoint to see if we are on track to reach our goals for the science MAP test in the spring.  We have individual goals that we are working towards as well as reaching a goal of 205. The score 205 of is what the NWEA (the creator of the MAP tests) says a 5th grader should reach at the end of their 5th grade year.

While reaching our goals is great and wonderful, I always want to stress that growing is important.  If a student is growing then they are learning.  I want all my students to LEARN.

To help show that we are GROWING and LEARNING, we have a data wall in our science class room.  The data wall has two graphs for each class.  1. the fall class scores and 2. the winter class scores.  Here they are for each class:

5A

5B

5C

5D

To help emphasize growth (and practice referencing graphs), I asked students to see if their class showed growth from the fall to the winter test.
What do you think, did the classes grow from the fall to the winter? Answer in the comment section.

We all GREW!

WOW!  It has been crazy since coming back to school last month.  Here is the abbreviated version of what we have done since coming back from winter break last month:

• had our science fair question, hypothesis, and procedure checked (Science Fair board is due MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29!!!!!)
• learned the difference between inherited traits and acquired traits 
• identified inherited and acquired traits of cats, dogs, and ourselves 
• showed goodness (January's character education word of the month)
• demonstrated love (February's character education word of the month)
• completed an experiment about hairstyles 
• assessed ourselves on traits 
• taken our mid-year MAP tests for reading, math, and science 

We take a pre-test before each unit and then a post test at the end of the unit.  We take the pre-test to tell us what we already know about the unit, what we need to focus on this unit, and put us into our groups for this unit.  

So since we have taken our pre AND post test for traits I have news...EVERY STUDENT GREW!  This means every student scored higher on their post test than their pre-test!  That is awesome!  This means EVERYONE LEARNED SOMETHING!  Congrats on all the hard work 5th grade!  

Our goal in 5th grade is to grow and we are doing that! 

Happy Holidays!

We were all excited for this day...Friday before our winter break!!!!

Let's get this day going!

We partied hard!  Games, coloring, movies galore, and dance breaks!

My sweet kids 

From my heart to yours,...happy holidays and happy new year!  Please stay safe and I look forward to seeing my kiddos and families again come 2016.  I can't wait to begin the second half of the school year with you!

Science Fair

It's that time again....science fair!  Earlier this week students were given our school's science fair informational packet.  The packet includes all check points and due dates.  Here is a brief overview of the science fair that I gave the students.

The science fair project is just like our investigations (labs or experiments) that we do in class.  We have completed two lab report sheets in our science notebook about two investigations about paper airplanes and exercise.  Science fair is just like completing our lab reports just on a bigger space.  Instead of one sheet of paper in our notebook, your information from your experiment will be on a tri-fold board.  An example of a finished project is below.

The science fair experiment MUST INCLUDE: 

• a testable question
• hypothesis 
• plan (materials and procedure)
• graph showing data from experiment 
• conclusion 
• photos 

I will have check points for each part of the science fair experiment to make sure students understand what they are doing and that they are doing things at a 5th grade level.  Below are the dates of the checkpoints along with THE due date. 

Checkpoint	Due Date
Testable Question	Friday, January 8
Hypothesis	Friday, January 15
Materials and Procedure Check #1	Friday, January 22
Materials and Procedure Check #2	Friday, January 29
Evidence of Progress (video, parent email, written description, video, or parent phone call)	Friday, February 5
Graph Set Up	Wednesday, February 10
Conclusion	Friday, February 19
Science Fair Project Board	Monday, February 29