This MONTH at school

What have we been up to in my classroom?

Well, I got strep throat a while ago and took a couple days off work.  When I came back my students accused me of having a cold because it sounded like I had something stuck in my throat.

But we've done some art and had some displayed in an art show (zebras and elephants).

We made "working" models of our digestive system then went outside and ran water through them to make them "pee"... we all enjoyed that.

We've been learning about our lungs lately.  Yesterday we put one breath into a balloon and measured how much water it displaced in a bucket.  Next week we will do some exercise and check it again.

We have been reading "Boy in the Striped Pajamas" for ELA and social studies. 

 My friend also sent me this template of a museum (okay, she had already made up all the rooms and everything so it was super easy to get my students to fill in the information).  I put a couple of my grade 6 students in charge of the different rooms in our virtual museum (my grade 5's were doing sensitive issues with another teacher).  Then I had them come up with a question for each thing they did that could be answered from reading the information they have provided.  See below for some screen shots of the museum my friend put together (I have our museum with all our info saved on my work computer only).  Hopefully we will find time to get into the computer lab to go through it.  The grade 6's keep asking when we will do it.

One day, when I'm not so overwhelmed with teaching a new grade every year, I would like to change the rooms and use this virtual museum as a template for other topics.

On Monday we are going to start a final project in Social Studies that will have groups of students studying the different decades of the 1900's. In my opinion it's a little late for a final project so I'm really hoping we can pull it off.  The last couple of weeks (there is only 3 weeks left) we will have a decade party a day.

In ELA we are making fairy tales based off of other ones that we read.  And it's taking FOREVER.  Gah.. I thought we would have time for one last novel before we departed for summer but that isn't going to happen.

And in math we are chugging along in math groups.  It makes me happy that some students were excited when we went back to math groups instead of whole class instruction.  I'm happy that they are happy.  I think we are going to quickly get through area and perimeter and do this project on volume and nets.  In grade 5 there is a weather unit that we didn't do in science (because I've been doing grade 5 and 6 science stuff) so this is a good way to incorporate that... even if it is just a little.

Last week we went to the zoo for our field trip.  My group went to the polar bear tunnel at the right time and saw them swimming.  I was super impressed... even if the picture the girls in my group took doesn't show it... they didn't tell me they were taking it.

We had our track and field day on Wednesday.  The rain held off for the most part which was always a plus.

Hopefully everyone is having a wonderful end to their school year!

(only 15 more days here... but who's counting?)