Your science fair project is due in 25 days!

How has your work been going on the science fair?  Anybody have any tips or suggestions for things you have found to be  beneficial?  Have you started on your display board yet?  Did your hypothesis match your results? 

I look forward to reading about the progress of your science fair projects!

-Mr. Lund

(Thank you Mrs. Ebener for the post idea!)

So,  here’s my story.   It’s my dinner time and I just posted the answers to the last math challenge.   I was really impressed by all the correct solutions!  But, I was starting to get hungry.  I wanted a sandwich!  Needless to say, I’m still without my dinner, but here is the next problem!  I would suggest you gather the family around the dinner table with a few subs and try to devour this problem! Good Luck.  I’ll post the correct solution next Wednesday night!

A math student interviewed 50 fifth graders. 41 said they like peanut butter sandwiches, 35 liked jam sandwiches and 30 liked both on their sandwiches.  How many students liked neither?Stuck?  Need a hint?  Look at the tags!  Mr. Lund

 

 

 Do you believe that there was a wolf, a coyote, and a skunk was at GIS? Mr. Beckerman brought the skins from these animals along with much, much more!

 Mr. Beckerman from the USDA came to our school and taught us about wildlife and animals that we can relate to the books we are reading in class. We played a quiz and we guessed animals, and if we get it right we get prizes.

…Out of time!….

What was your favorite animal or amazing fact?

Brock & Mason

Each day in reading, a student presents a book that they’ve finished reading.  We call these presentations, Book Talks.  The goal of a book talk to two fold – for the student to demonstrate their knowledge about the book and for the class to hear about new books each day.

During the book talk, the student show present the following information about the book.

1. Show the cover of the book to the class

2. Start with a good lead to capture the students’ attention.

3. Tell the author, title, genre

4. Explain why you chose to share the book – Is the book part of a series? Do you love the author?  Is this your favorite genre?  Etc…

5. Tell a summary of the book, but don’t give away the secrets to the plot.

6. Answer two questions from classmates

7.  NEW!!! To create a record of our book talks, student may complete add to our book talk poster in class or post about their book on this blog!

In science, we’ve been conducting paper chromatography.  The students have conducted two labs – examining the mixtures of black markers. 

The second chromatography lab really had the students engaged as they “helped” Mr. LaFrance figure out which “student” was responsible for defacing my photo!  The students used their new chemistry skills to conduct an experiment that tried to identify the culprit!  Although the students should know which student is guility based upon their chromatography results, I would suggest that they stay away from Juvenile Jake whom has been making the best choices lately!

Michael, in Mrs. Burtle’s class, suggested that I post some more experiments for the students to try at home.  So Michael, here are two ideas to try at home!  Thanks for the idea!

1.  Try paper chromatography with Kool-Aide!  When you’re at the store, ask your parents to help you find a flavor that several dyes listed on the ingredients listing on the back. (I would suggest Grape or Fruit Punch.)  These dyes will be near the end of the ingredients and will be named like Red #40, Blue #1, or Yellow #5.  I would make super saturated mixtures of Kool-Aide and water. (Start with a spoonful of water in a cup and the Kool-Aide powder until it becomes almost gel-like!)  You can use coffee filter paper or paper towels cut into strips for the chromatography paper.  From there, just make your dots of color, suspend over a cup of water, and patiently wait for some results!  I’d love to see the results!

2. Try making some artwork! Check out this site that uses markers to create Chromatography Art!

Finding a pattern can be tricky -Sometimes very icky!

You will get stuck if you read in just one way – Let your mind stray!

Look at the chart and fill in the numbers.

The key is to find a pattern.

	4	5	9				16		7
	2	2	4		5	7		1
	2	3	5	6		8			4
	4	6	20	42	25		63	2

Good Luck!  HINT:  Try looking in different directions for the pattern. Left to right is only one way.

THE ANSWER WILL BE POSTED ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 – SO GET YOUR ANSWERS IN EARLY!

And we’re back publishing to our blog!

The website that hosts our blog has been busy upgrading the site to bring stability and more speed.  Unfortunately for us, that has meant that the blog has been unavailable to the students to publish and comment this week!

This week had the students visiting Cahokia Mounds with several brave parents.  The students were finally able to walk these sacred grounds and connect with the ideas that they’ve been learning about in social studies.  Learning about these people in a book is nice, but to visit the same ground where these people lived out their daily lives really brings the ideas home.  Many students could not fathom the idea of carrying 60 pound baskets of dirt to build Monk’s Mound – let alone repeating the task 14 million times!

On Friday, Mrs. Lund arrived at GIS with her traveling chemistry demonstrations.  The students sat in awe as she talked about topics like density, mixtures, polymers, acid/bases, and much more!  I was very impressed by the short conversation/debriefing the class had after her presentation.   Although the students did not understand each topic completely, their comprehension of the topics had definitely grown!  

To make the full week even fuller, Mrs. Larson presented our kick off lesson on Summarizing.  We’ve spent the last month focused on Predictions, so now the students will continue to evaluate their predictions while the class learns to create well thought summaries of fiction texts.  

To the students, I’m eager to hear about your thoughts about the week!  Take some time and craft a well written comment to our week’s activities.  Here are a few questions to help spark your thoughts -

Did you enjoy our trip to Cahokia Mounds?  Would you want to spend a summer helping the archaeologists search for more clues about the Cahokian people?  Researchers do not know what happened to these peoples, do you have a strong prediction?

Which of Mrs. Lund’s demonstrations was the best?  Which demonstration would you like to learn more about?  Have you cut open a baby’s diaper to find the polymers?  Which demonstration should she remove from her presentation?

Mrs. Larson was impressed by the classes ability to summarize.  Please summarize a chapter in one of the books you’re reading right now.  Can you include details and conclusions without becoming too wordy?

Good Luck!

Mr. Lund 

Did you know that Native Americans are the only ones to use porcupine quils to make designs on clothing? I sure didn’t until Ms. Youngbuck told me that they used on clothing and shoes. We learned about how many indian tribes are different but the same.

Ms. Youngbuck came to our school and gave a presentation to the 5th graders. She is a real Native American She came from the Cherokee. She talked about life as an indian in the Cherokee tribe.

Angie’s favorite part was when Ms. Youngbuck passed around the beaver skin. The reason she passed around the skin was because she wanted us to know how much a beaver skin is worth. A beaver skin is worth one bear skin, two fox skins, and four coyote skins.

Bailee’s favorite part was when Ms. Younbuck passed around the aross arrows from the different tribes.  I thought they were very interesting to know that the tribes made arrows differently!

What was your favorite part of her talk?  I’d love to read about it!

Angie & Bailee

 Halloween! Scary! Spooky! A haunted night! What are you going to be on the spooky, scary, and haunted Halloween?  Are you going to go trick-or-treating with somebody?  Are you going trick-or-treating the whole night? Are you going to any haunted houses?

I remember a couple years ago, I dressed up like a cheerleader and went trick-or-treating with one of my friend and we went around mostly half of the neighborhood {it was a huge neighborhood1}.  What have you done for Halloween?

Jocelyn and Paige

To enhance our learning on Native American Tribes,

the students were put into small groups and were asked to make a Photo Story presentation.

The students selected photos, conducted research, created scripts, and recorded themselves presenting the information.

All of this was combined into a presentation that includes background music and moving images!

Check them out!

http://gis.bcsd.k12.il.us/Classroom%20Web%20Pages/Lund%20Web/lundstudentwork.htm