Health

The last few weeks we have been focusing on health instead of science.  We have been discussing chronic and communicable diseases.  We have gone more in depth when talking about diseases of the heart--we have learned about risk factors, how to reduce our risk of heart disease, and we'll be learning about how the blood flows throughout our body.  The kids are VERY excited to take a look at a real pig's heart and identify all the parts of the heart that we will learn about!
We will return to science shortly--we will end the school with a unit on Landforms and investigate certain concepts such as erosion and deposition.

Marr Park

Our Marr Park fieldtrip will be Tuesday, May 21st.  The volunteer forms should have come home last week.  If you are interested in volunteering, please send the sheet back to school or email one of us as soon as possible so we can get groups formed for that day.  It is a FUN day, but we need lots of parents to help!  Parents can either ride the bus with us, follow us over, or meet us there.  We're looking forward to it!

Math Update

 Measuring the height and radius of different cylinders in order to find the volume of the cylinders.

We just finished our Unit 10 posttest (Algebra Concepts and Skills).  Students were introduced to the idea of algebra through pan balance problems--not only do these pan balances give the kids a good idea of how algebra works (our rule is "what we do to one side of the pan balance we have to do to the other) but they're also a lot of fun--there are a lot of algebra fans in here that were able to take their pan balance skills and put them to work in real algebraic equations.  We have also worked with an app on the iPads called "Hands-On Equations."  We started Unit 11 (Volume) earlier this week.  We reviewed the properties of geometric solids and sorted their properties using a Venn Diagram--lots of good discussion and negotiation was happening in our room!  We will also be investigating the volume of cylinders, pyramids, and cones.  There are MANY new skills in 5th grade math at this time of year, but the students are doing an awesome job of staying focused, staying curious, and they're working hard!