5B Classroom: Week of September 10th

A note from Mrs. Burke:
After this post, all future blog posts will be written by the students!  During the morning check in time, students will be classroom reporters so they can let you know what's been going on in class.  It's a wonderful opportunity for them to write with a purpose, to an audience.  I also look forward to reading what they take away from what we do in class.

Here I some highlights I captured from this past week:  

Getting to Know You Activity: We All Fit Together in 5B!
During the first week of school, students completed a community building activity where each student decorated a large puzzle piece sharing some information about themselves. We put the puzzle pieces together to decorate one of our classroom bulletin boards.  I learned many interesting things about each student from family, pets, and hobbies, to favorite colors, adjectives to describe themselves, and much more!  Student also learned about things they have in common, as well as their differences.  Our bulletin board is finally complete:

Science

We started our unit on Engineering and Design.  Students are learning about each step in the Engineering and Design process through investigations. 

Here is this week's investigation.

Investigation: Foil Boats

The Problem: The Pennies Club are out for a leisurely afternoon on a boat.  Everything was just peachy until the boat sprang a leak and sank!  The only supply they have is a 1 ft by 1 ft piece of aluminum foil.  You need to rescue as many members of the Pennies Club as you can.

 

Students worked hard as they followed the steps in the Engineering and Design process to solve the problem in this investigation.  Some groups struggled as they found out it wasn't easy to all agree on one design.  

Language Arts: The American Revolution

Students are continuing to learn about The American Revolution.  They have been reading many texts that describe different perspectives of the war.  The focus this week was on the perspective of the Loyalists.

Second Step:  

We started our Second Step program this week.  This is a program the entire school uses.  It teaches the students about empathy and problem solving.  The focus this week was to introduce the students to the topics they will be learning about this year in 5th grade.  We had a discussion about what they learned in Second Step last year and how the topics are different this year.  I will teach a Second Step lesson every week.