Friday, January 7, 2011

4th Grade - The word of the day was Fleet. Fleet means a group of cars, boats, or other type of vessel and sounds like Feet. The pilgrim for today was Frederick Douglass. At the age of eight, Frederick was taught to read by his owner's wife who didn't know it was against the law to teach slaves to read. When she had to stop teaching him, he had white playmates help him learn more about reading. At the age of 20, he escaped to freedom and became an abolitionist. He also wrote a book, something he should have never been able to do. Our puzzle for today was a "Quizzle" or logic elimination puzzle. For more practice doing these types of puzzles, go to http://www.puzzlersparadise.com/page1042.html. The affective lesson centered around the idea that we need to find a balance between the many activities we are involved in doing. Students were given a visual of plates spinning on poles to represent the activities they are involved in and then asked how they thought they were performing in each activity. The SOS project had students completing a team test which was a review of the last several weeks of study. Students then wrote up directions for building their creature. Those directions will be sent to the other schools involved in this project. It will be interesting to see what they robots look like when completed by the other schools.

5th Grade - The word of the day was Whimsical. Whimsical means erratic in behavior; unpredictable; having a quaint or fanciful quality and sounds like Swim Popsicle. Their pilgrim of the day was Thomas Alva Edison. One day while he was gluing paper together in his laboratory, Thomas Edison spread some glue on a piece of paper and let it dry. Later he added a few drops of water to see if it would stick. It did and we now have envelopes that we can lick and seal shut. These students also did the Quizzler puzzle for a warm-up activity. Students then pondered what was right or wrong in different situations. They completed a quick test as a review of the SOS project. The final activity was to write up an essay of the information they collected regarding the history and present technology of their invention. These essays are part of their ExploraVision project.