Plympton might not have a quidditch team, but that hasn’t stopped the 5th graders from getting off to a flying start. Quote slips have been put outside my classroom for students to grab as they need!

Last week in 1st: Students studied the importance of animal parents helping their babies and began talking about the benefits of camouflage.

Last week in 2nd: Students began thinking about which ocean animal they want to focus on for our upcoming ocean research project. Sharks, dolphins, and penguins are the popular options so far.

Last week in 3rd Students split into 2 teams to analyze bar graphs of 2017/18 Waltham weather. Each team wrote trivia questions about graphs for the other team to answer (ex. which month has the most...). If answered correctly, the team shot a ball into a basket to earn a point.

Last week in 4th: Students practiced making scientific claims, designing appropriate tests for their claims, using relevant data from their tests as evidence, and evaluating reasoning behind why that data is relevant. They will use this information to run experiments this week.

Last week in 5th: Students finished up with their models of the earth and sun explaining what a day is, what a year is, and what causes each day to have sunlight and night. We also discussed why the 🌞 being the closest star makes it appear to be the largest. Moving on to the 🌛

In the spirit of 5th grade learning space science (and a certain 2nd grader with lots of amazing questions), I’m finally pushing through this book. Great read!

It doesn’t take Mad Eye Moody to see how tight the competition between 4th and 5th is going to be this year! 4th grade off to an early lead 🦅

A few options for the 2nd graders to consider for their ocean research project 👀

Last week in 1st: Students continued studying camouflage, focusing on the importance of color and texture of an animal relative to its surroundings. The octopus’ ability to change its appearance so quickly and accurately was by far the crowd favorite.

Last week in 2nd: Using chrome books, students began practicing their online research skills while navigating PebbleGo for their potential animal in the ocean research project.

Last week in 3rd: Students discussed the vocabulary words Matter, Volume, and Mass ahead of finding ways to test whether air is matter.

Last week in 4th: Students split into small groups and rotated through 4 stations where they tested various causes of erosion and deposition. Tests included water on rock and sand, air on rock and sand, friction between rocks, and acidity levels of rain.

Last week in 5th: Since the weather has been so cloudy and the students couldn’t see for themselves, we spent a day focusing on the moon cycle. We researched the most recent moon cycle (which ends tonight!), focusing on waxing versus waning and crescent versus gibbous.

Last week in 1st: Believe it or not, there are animals in each of these collages! The first graders searched NatGeo magazines for colors and textures best suited to camouflaging their animal.

Last week in 2nd: Students chose their ocean animal for their research project. They will be researching their animal for the next few weeks in order to be the class expert. They will ultimately be teaching their classmates about their animal.

Last week in 3rd: The students made a whole class KWL chart about hurricanes. We will be studying hurricanes ahead of an engineering project to design solutions for avoiding wind and water damage.

Last week in 4th: Students began initial research into volcanos, glaciers, earthquakes, oceans, rivers, tornados, and hurricanes ahead of a research project. We also had a special visit from Mrs. Duquette, the school nurse, to help us learn about serious food allergies.

Last week in 5th: Officially done with space science, we are beginning the water cycle. In groups of 4, students rotated through a four station anchor chart to collect their pre-unit knowledge of the water cycle. We will do this again post-unit to track how much we’ve learned!