Wow! A great fall party! Thank you to all the parents that sent items and helped make the party a success! The kids thought this was “the best party ever!”

“Our ET lesson this week is on Chain Reactions. A little divergent thinking for our fifth grade friends. Students sequentially can explain the steps in the chain reaction they created in ET to crush an acorn. Many colorful vocabulary and signal words can be included as they attempt to elaborate on how their chain reaction will actually work. The practice in sequencing is particularly helpful in preparing for the math extended response.” – Mrs. Brown

Mrs. Reed started ET with a video that caught our attention! What do you think about the cleverness of the video? What was your reaction to this chain reaction?

Students – Could you use some descriptive writing and figurative language to describe the chain reaction you drew in school?

-Mr. Lund & Mrs. Reed

Our afternoons are filled with literature and writing. Our class has started to explore the vast selection of tall tales. We’ve started by reading picture books on Swamp Angel and Paul Bunyan. These graphic novels gave us the chance to learn about the unique features of tall tales – the exaggeration, the humor, the powerful main characters, the action packed plot, and the unique endings that leave the characters gone but not forgotten! The students are also reading longer tales in their novels on the same characters. They have been engaged to see the differences and similiarities of these stories!

To extend our learning, I would challenge my students and families to go to this linked Tall Tale website and enjoy some tales retold by S.E. Schlosser. She has many stories and some amazing characters that we will not have the chance to discover in our classroom.

After reading a story, please comment about the story. Include the title of the tall tale so that other friends can discover a good story, too! When you tell us about the tall tale, try to include some of the exaggerations, action, and amazing events from the tale!

- Mr. Lund

Tall Tales by S.E. Schlosser

Science Fair has gone great so far this month!

Here’s what we’ve been doing with these fantastic projects and how we started the process of it all.  About a month ago, Mr. Lund and Mrs. Burtle teamed up to get us started on our projects and told us what to do. We read a humorus book about the science fair that ate the school!  Everyone had to think of what their  project was going to be about. We got 2 packets, one packet that told us what to do for each step of the way for these projects, the question|purpose, hypothesis, research, procedure for the experiment, and then our conclusion. The other packet was our Science Fair Project Journal where we wrote everything down for our project and what we would say. On October 27th, we talked about our projects and showed them to our classmates.  That afternoon, we presented our projects to the public – families, friends and fellow students came to hear us present our research and results.  It was an amazing experience! 

Check out the photos from our science fair!

-Zakiya and Marisa

A BIG congratulations to our class for passing our first box top goal of 150 tops collected! 

Read the note below! 

Let’s keep up this strong effort!  I think we are very close to 300 Box Tops!  Thank you for cutting them out and sending them in to our class!

-Mr. Lund

Several students from this year and past correctly solved our last “Can You Solve This?” challenge! Congrats!

This week’s challenge is UNIQUE! This week you must find an adult that lives near or far from you and teach them how to solve a Ken Ken. The adult can be a parent, grandparent, neighbor, or friend of the family. Once you’ve taught them the rules, the tricks, and the methods to find the missing answers, work with them to solve this six by six Ken Ken! This Ken Ken requires you to use addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to find all the missing numbers!  (It might be tricky!)

To receive credit for this challenge, the adult must leave a comment about this experience. Was the Ken Ken fun? Was it challenging? How did you solve it? Good luck and remember to post your comment by next Wednesday!

- Mr. Lund

After talking to Mrs. Lund, she recommended that I put a link to the kenken.com website where this problem can be solved online.  The site also give hints to help you solve this problem!

Check out our fantastic photos from the fishing trip. You can also find the photos on our classroom website! A big thank you to all the parents that helped make this trip a huge success! – Mr. Lund

Earlier this week, we had two visitors to our classroom – Mrs. Karri and Mr. Beckerman.  The class learned a lot from each of them.  Here is some more information about their visits.

Mrs. Karri came in and told us about rural and urban art. Urban art is a Spanish name meaning city. Rural means country and regular pictures or photos.  She showed us this picture that had the two biggest skyscrapers in the US. What do you think that picture would be, rural or urban? We all enjoyed having Mrs. Karri come in and teach us some wonderful things about art!

Mr.Beckerman  also gave us a great time. He asked us what Illinois animals he was talking about  by giving hints. He would give us a special prize if we got the answer right. He changed our thoughts about animals and showed us they aren’t all harmful and need our help. So help the poor, defenseless animals from death! There were animals like foxes, wolves, weasels, raccoons, beavers and much more wonderful animals! Mr. Beckerman was a great speaker!

Those were our updates on guest speakers!

-Ryan & Easton

Mr. Fletcher saved his nickel and dimes until he had 55 cents to spend on some new baseball cards. Mr. Fletcher paid for the baseball cards with 8 coins. How many of each coin did Mr. Fletcher have?

This challenge must be answered with your methods and reasons by next Wednesday, October 21 for all the extra credit and fame you can enjoy!

Starting next week, all band lessons will begin at GIS!

Our class will have their “all band lessons” on Monday and Wednesday from 11:25 -11:55. These lessons are in addition to your regular instrument lesson!
-Mr. Lund