As you all know, we just finished a very fun project. We became wax statues for an hour! But it was not that easy. First before we could become our statues, we had to choose and research an important American figure. We had to find information about early life, later life, accomplishments, and interesting facts about our person. Then taking that information we wrote a biography that we wrote, edited, and printed. After that we THEN started our backdrops: dding all the information, making it look nice, outlining, adding pictures, coloring, and adding the finishing touch is what we had to do. Along with all that craziness, we had to write a short speech about our person's accomplishments and memorize it. Then finally, when we were all in costume, we became statues!I Lots of classes and parents came to visit (see pictures below). They pushed the "button" on our backdrops and we "came to life" to tell them our speech. We had a very fun time doing the Bad wax museum. Did you have a fun time and what did you learn? Working on our BackdropsThe Bad Wax Museum!To show our knowledge about Changes in the Earth's Surface, we got a choice on how to create a project on plate tectonics, earthquakes and volcanoes, or landforms. We used informational texts and our notes from the unit to do the research part. One option was creating a picture book for Mrs. Hyde's second grade class. Another option was to create a physical model and informational poster. The last option was to create a PowerPoint and record the screen while we presented it to make an educational "movie" about our topic. Look below to see some photos of our projects as well as links to the educational "movies" we created! PowerPoint "Movie" Links: Research and Working On Our ProjectsSharing our Picture Books with Mrs. Hyde's ClassInformational Posters and ModelsI don't want to start a war, but that's what happened in 1861: The Civil War! The problem was between the Union and the Confederates, which were both in America. We learned about the events leading up to the Civil War, like the tariff problems placed on imports, the issue of state rights (that's called sectionalism), slavery, the election of 1860, and the secession of the South. The biggest problem was slavery. The Union (North) did not want slavery but the Confederates (South) did because they had large plantations that they could use slaves to help farm. But there were some states that were border states. These states were in between the two sides. We learned about how slaves were treated, how they had to escape to the North to get to freedom thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation, and about the Underground Railroad. We also learned about the importance of cotton to the South. We even did an activity where we tried to gin cotton by hand like slaves had to before the cotton gin was invented - it was hard! Last we learned about the life of a Civil War soldier. Although this was a short unit, what was your favorite part and what do you think it would be like if you were living during the Civil War? Our next unit in science was electricity! First we learned about the two types: static and current. For static electricity, we learned that the electrons build up in one place. When they "jump" to a new object (because opposite charges attract), that is called static discharge. That's what lightning is! That's also what happens when you rub your feet against the carpet then touch something metal. After static electricity, we learned that current electricity is the flow of electrons through a pathway. We did some awesome labs, including building simple, series, and parallel circuits. We also used lemons to create batteries.It took all 8 of the lemons in the class to light one LED bulb! We used hands-on materials to build all of our circuits after we first diagrammed them and learned the definitions of each part in our science notebooks. Finally, we had a guest speaker come to our class (Ms. Bad's brother) to tell us about how he uses electricity and circuits at his job at Boeing. They build airplanes, which uses electrical circuits to for all the parts of an airplane that use light or power. We learned about how electrical power can be changed into other types of energy. We connected a copper wire to a battery and it got really hot, which is heat energy. We used that hot wire to cut marshmallows and chocolate! What was your favorite part of this unit? The last few weeks we have been learning about magnetism. We learned about magnetic poles, all the different types of magnets, magnetic fields, and we even went around the room testing what was magnetic and what was not. OPPOSITES ATTRACT, LIKES REPEL! We did a lab where we were rubbing a nail on a magnet and made it a temporary magnet, then we put it on a piece of cork and made a compass. We also learned about how the Earth has a magnetic field and compasses align with that field to point north. Then we tested the strength of electromagnets by wrapping a steel nail with a wire that was connected to a battery. Throughout this term we did so many hands on experiments and had so much fun and I think that I can speak for everyone and say that this was a pretty fantastic term. We can't wait for are next science term...at least I can't. We the people of Ms. Bad's social studies class did a simulation about the American Revolutionary War to learn about what happened during this important event in our history. We have been doing it with our rivals, Queen Newman and the Parliament of the 6th. Every day in homeroom we learned about what happen between the American Colonist and the British, like the acts imposed on the colonies, how the colonies reacted, and how the British government and King George III also reacted. Then, after we learned about the major events, the same thing happened to us using our class economy money in the simulation! First, Queen Newman and the Parliament of the 6th put taxes on us for them protecting us which they didn't do, just like the British forced the colonists to pay more taxes to help pay for "protection" and war debts after the French and Indian War. Then, they put the Stamp Act on us and made us pay MORE for school supplies. After that the Parliament of the 6th put the Quartering Act on us and took Carson and Dakota's desks, The Green Family, the library book checkout sheet, the rulers, and even our calculators! Finally, we got tired of this (just like the colonists!) and gave them our grievances, but it didn't work. They wouldn't stop taxing us, so we we protested around their room stomping, chanting saying, "NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!" After our protest, we wrote a Declaration of Independence and "battled" the 6th grade to earn our freedom! Check out all the pictures from the simulation below. What was your favorite part of the simulation? Add it to the comments! Parliament of the 6th Declarations and Classroom ActivitiesPreparing for the ProtestThe Protest!Signing the Declaration of IndependenceThe Declaration of 5th Grade IndependenceThe Battle of WPA - December 18th, 2017This term in science we were studying heredity and traits. We learned so much! We learned about inherited and acquired traits, about DNA, genes, and GMOs and how adaptations and variations can help an organism survive in its environment. Did you know some pigs glow int he dark because of genetic engineering? Scientist found a way to transfer jellyfish DNA to pigs and make them glow in the dark! We learned that 50% of our DNA is from our mom and 50% is from our dad. We studied dominant and recessive traits and did some Punnett Squares and created smiley faces using genetics and probability. The whole term was very fun (minus the notes). What was your favorite part? This unit we learned about the Age of Exploration. First we did a KWL for what we knew about the Age of Exploration. Then we learned how to do Cornell notes and with that we took notes on the 3 Gs, or the 3 reasons why explorers came to the New World. The 3 Gs stand for glory, gold, and god. We learned that that's why they traveled to the New World. Then we learned about explorers, like Christopher Columbus. People may think that he is a hero but that's not true. He punished Native Americans by cutting off their hands if they did not do work for him. He was very selfish and used the Native Americans as slaves. After that, we also learned about other explorers like Vasco de Gama, Ferdinand Magellan, and John Cabot. We learned their travel routes from all over the world (literally). After that we read excerpts from two explorers' journals: Christopher Columbus and Bartolome Las Casas. Their journals are called primary source documents because they are from a person who was there when it happened. Then we learned about the New World and the Columbian Exchange. Did you know that bananas are from the Old World? Last, we learned about the first English settlements in America, like Jamestown, Roanoke, and Plymouth. We did skits that explained the story of how the colonies were founded and one group did a poster. That's it for now. What did you like doing from this unit? What are your thoughts on Christopher Columbus? |
AuthorSocial Studies Star: Abby Archives
May 2018
Categories |