A Visit to the Lowell Cemetery

On Friday, our class and the other fifth grade classes took a tour of the Lowell Cemetery.  We learned all about the monuments in the gardens over at the cemetery.  Mr. Richard Howe, the Register of Deeds for the City of Lowell, took time out of his busy schedule to teach all about the personal stories behind the monuments in the gardens and about the materials used to create the monuments.  We all appreciate the time that Mr. Howe took to get the tour ready for us and his willingness to work with us as we took our first walking field trip of the year.  All of the fifth graders that attended were very respectful and we appreciate that they could join us.  If you would like more information about what we saw, you can visit the Lowell Cemetery website at http://www.lowellcemetery.com/

Surviving Hurricane Sandy and getting back to work

Hello everyone,
Well, there was no school Monday and Tuesday due to Hurricane Sandy.  Today we began working on our division unit in Investigations Math.  This week students will be taking the math benchmarks tests.  In science, we are finishing up our unit on the solar system.  Next week we will begin learning about rocks and minerals.  In social studies, we are still working on Latin America, with a current focus on Mexico.

What is happening in our class this week?

This week in social studies we will continue learning about Latin America.  Last week we talked about the Mayans and the Aztecs, and we worked on creating a scale model of a Mayan temple.  In science, we are continuing our unit on the solar system.  The chapter two test is coming up, so make sure you know the vocabulary for chapter 2 and all about the inner and outer planets.  In math, we are continuing to work on the unit about multiplication.  Now we are working on multiplying double digit by double digit numbers.  Soon we will be moving on to division.
On Friday, our class will be going with the other fifth grade classes to the Lowell Cemetery for a tour.  In writer's workshop, we have been writing personal narratives.  During our tour, we will hear the personal stories behind the monuments in the many gardens at the Lowell Cemetery.

The Book Fair

Our school is having a book fair next week.  Students will be bringing home a flyer with just some of the books available.  You can also purchase books at scholastic.com/fair.  All orders ship to our school for free and our school receives a portion of the profits to buy books for our school.  Please take a look at our classroom wish list.

In Science class this week we learned that stars are flaming balls of gas.  We also learned that astronomers make pictures by connecting the stars in the sky and they call them constellations.  We made our own constellations by splatter painting.  We splattered paint of different colors on dark sheets of construction paper to create a star field and then connected the dots (stars) to create a constellation.  Did you know that stars can be different colors depending on their temperature?