Investigations Gone Frigid!

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If you’re looking for a fun science investigation, you should try the almighty Ice Globes! An Ice Globe is just a frozen water balloon. After it’s frozen, you simply remove the balloon from the ice. Our teacher gave us 3 mystery ingredients and our choice of food coloring that we put on top of the Ice Globes. As the food coloring traveled through the cracks, it transformed into a colorful winter sensation. One of the mystery ingredients was a liquid, and two were powdery type substances. We also had a water bottle, a magnifying glass, a pin, a straw, a wooden popsicle stick and a thermometer.
We learned safety practices for the science lab and even got to wear our Mad Scientist Goggles. We also learned that wafting is safer than accidentally sniff, snuff, snortling a dangerous substance. We observed the reaction of the different substances to the ice. We found that one of them eroded and weathered away our Ice Globes. We poked and prodded, played and pondered as we jotted down our observations. Ice globes are really fun, and something you should try at home. We had an icy blast!

Cedar Breaks

Cedar Breaks

Have you ever been to Cedar Mountain? Well, guess what?! Our first field trip of the year, we got to go to Cedar Mountain. While we were there, we learned about how the earth’s surface changes. It was incredible! Here is what we learned:

First we went to Cedar Breaks. We met Ranger Daphne and Ranger Jason. They were the ones to show us around and tell us all about how Cedar Mountain was formed. They described it in a brief summary like a book in three chapters. Chapter One: Lake Bonneville and it’s Colorful Layers. The layers are formed by deposition. Deposition is when sand piles on top of each other and is smashed together. Chapter Two: Rock and Roll. That chapter was about how Cedar Mountain and Cedar City were just a flat place when it was Lake Bonneville. Then uplift occurred by faults and earthquakes because two plates collided! They pushed together and made Cedar Mountain. The mountain is 5,000 feet above Cedar City and 10,000 feet above sea level. Chapter Three: Slip Sliding Away. This is about erosion and weathering. Erosion is moving something away somewhere else and weathering is breaking down. If you have ever been to Cedar Breaks then you have seen erosion and weathering. There is a lot of hoodoos and rock walls. We even saw the Square Arch and one other arch. These were all pretty much made out of erosion and weathering.

When we got on the bus and got going, we started eating our lunch. Then, as we were eating our lunches, we passed by some lava beds. We could see from our windows that there was no plant life growing. It was only growing around the big, black, volcanic rock. They were like giant fields of rock. We had to write in our journals about them. On the way to Mammoth Cave every body was yelling, “WE ARE GOING TO DIE!” We were scared because there was a big cliff on the side! But of course, we didn’t drive off the cliff and die. Going up the mountain we got off the highway and got on to the dirt road. It was wet and there was a lot of mud puddles that made the bus dirty. Some of the kids were saying we just went mudding.

Wow! Mammoth Cave was gigantic! As we were in the cave it was wet and dark. “Flip!” We turned on our flashlights and began to investigate. When we started walking some of us ran into some rocks and we had to watch out where we stepped. As we looked around the perimeter, and when we stopped to rest, we noticed and pointed out that the cave had thick, hard ridges hanging down. So we had to watch out for our heads. Our teacher told us how the cave was formed and how the outside crust cooled first and then lava flowed through the inside and formed the cave. It was pitch black in there, and a little scary when we turned all of our flashlights off. As we got closer to the end of the cave, we could see light up ahead, and didn’t know what it was. As we came a little closer to the light and it got brighter, we noticed that we had to army crawl over some rocks. It was very difficult to do because the hole was crowded and very small for a body to fit in, but we all made it out of that tiny dark hole.

We had so much fun on our field trip. The three chapters that Ranger Daphne explained to us, helped us understand how the Mountain and Cedar Breaks were formed. Mammoth Cave was amazing. All of us had a great time learning and crawling through a stinky, muddy cave. We had so much fun on our field trip to Mammoth Cave and to Cedar Breaks!

Superintendent of the Year!

This is a summary of the article we read about Dr. Johnson:

Our school district’s superintendent, Dr. Jim Johnson, was elected by the Utah School Superintendents Association to be the superintendent of the year.  Before he was a superintendent for Iron County, he was a teacher, coach, principal and an assistant superintendent. We think it’s cool that he throws a a teacher appreciation and student achievement celebration.  We like that he was in the school services for that long of a time and we think he deserves to be Superintendent of the Year.

Remembering 9/11

The students recently learned how to use Google Presentations, thanks to Kelly Mulliner at SEDC. This is a great way to create and share presentations while working collaboratively. Mrs. Jones guided the class to create questions and discover the answers to create the following presentation Remembering 9/11.

Ten Year Anniversary of 9/11

How lucky I am to be teaching fifth graders US History on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  These kids were either just born or a year old when the attacks happened.  They have no recollection themselves of that day that we remember so well.  How can we forget?  And remember….“We will never forget….” became so commonly said, but still stirred our hearts because we knew.  We never would forget.  Well, these kids that were just beginning their lives when it happened, won’t remember unless we teach them.  Teach them what we thought, what we felt, and that we don’t want them to forget either.  I’m sure this day that changed history changed the course of these babies’ lives too.  Please share your comments here about how this day impacted you so we can teach them.

The Second Week of School?

It is so hard for me to believe that we have only been in school for two weeks!  These kids are full of so much energy and enthusiasm, they sure do keep me on my toes.  It seems as though there was no summer, and I’ve known these kids for months.  They are bright and fun and like to do new things.  Here is their summary of a few of the things we have been doing this week:

We have a new poll on our blog about the new lunch schedule. The way the poll works is you get to choose as many answers as you want. There is a place that you can post your comments on the poll.  We enjoy it so much when you comment and give advice.

In math we have been learning what mean, range, mode, and median are. The mean is also known as the average number. You add all the numbers together and divide by how many  numbers you added together and that is your average. The mode is the most popular number in all.

We have brand new emails we use for school assignments and our blog.  We love the google docs app.  You can type on it for every day use like Word.

We are going on a field trip to the lava caves on Cedar Mountain in a few weeks to learn about earth changes.

Take our lunch poll!

Our First Week of School!

We are so excited to be back in school, and learning so many new things!  This post written by the kids and explains all the things we have been doing since school started.

READING

During reading we have learned a few new reading strategies like making connections, predicting and inferring, questioning, monitoring, summarizing, synthesizing, and evaluating. Those are all the strategies that we have learned. They will make you better in reading.  We will be learning more about these.

WRITING

We have started a project called writing around the neighborhood.  We have drawn a sketch of our house and yard. Writing Around the Neighborhood is about writing stories that we have had at our homes.  Like someone I know was talking to my little brother and ran into a metal pole.  So on the map I drew a pole for that story.

Google docs is a place to go to when  you are working with someone faraway or talking to a friend. Google docs is so cool and fun because you can revise and edit others work online.  That’s what we are learning to use before we post on our blog.

LUNCH

Yum! Yum! The chicken fried steak is the new tasty hit. Also the new milk is more delicious then last year’s. And recess before lunch! We like recess before lunch because we get hungrier and eat better too. The teachers like it better because we aren’t loud and rowdy, from coming in after recess. And the salad is different too.  It is prepared by Mrs. Judd instead of the salad bar we’ve had in years past. The bells that ring even sound different! That’s what’s new for E-valley school’s lunch.

NEWS

One of the things that’s fun about fifth grade is that we get to watch CNN Student News every day.  It’s a 10 minute program designed for students to learn the main headlines of what is happening in our world.  Here is what we learned this week:
The east coast is preparing for a terrible storm!!!  It is a threatening hurricane known as Hurricane Irene. People who live there have been storing food, water, blankets and other appliances that will help them survive. NASA photos also predict that it may head north.  NASA ‘s photos say that it’s going to hit hard.
Meanwhile, the east coast also suffered a 5.8 earthquake! That is very rare for this part of the country.  We even looked it up on a website called USGS Real-Time Earthquakes.  Click this link if you want to see earthquakes happening within the past week!

We also heard about the war in Libya.  Libya has been fighting over one year. They are also working together to kill their ruler. Their ruler, Khamis Gadhafi  has been the ruler of Libya for  over forty two years. Gadhafi has been living wealthy in his palace while the Libian people have suffered from starvation and many fatal diseases. To find out more about the Libian Civil War, go to CNN Student News   or CNN News.

MATH

Recently during math class we’ve been learning about the 4 math concepts mean, mode, median, and range. The median is the middle number. The range is the difference between the highest and the lowest number. The mode is the number that appears the most often. And finally the mean is the total divided into even groups.