Lend Us Your Ears Travel Back in Time By: Patrick & Owen

"Heads up the Hessians are approaching" -Sophia

"Oh look my new play has been published in the newspaper" -Lydia

"Those Patriots will never give up they just keep coming back for more" -Jake

This week we have been writing speeches for the Wax Museum.  The speeches we write will be read to visitors of the museum.  Students, faculty, friends, and family are invited to the Wax Museum on March 4th.  We created these speeches by reading through our reports, and boiling them down to the most important bits of information.  Each person in the Wax Museum will have a 45 - 60 second speech to memorize for the presentation.

The difference between our reports and the speeches is the we become the figure we studied.  Our speeches will be performed in front of our backgrounds we are creating in art class.  We looked at artwork from the time period, and also portraits of our figures to determine what our backgrounds would include.  Many of the students chose two very particular places for their background.  Some students chose to have their figure in the heat of battle on a field.  Others illustrated backgrounds to resemble their figure's home.

The paper we used to create these backgrounds came from a seven foot tall roll.  There are still a few more classes left to finish our work on the backgrounds.  The backgrounds will be hung around the Commons on Friday for our museum.  While making the backgrounds we had to think of a few different things.  The most important part of the background is that it makes sense to our speech and figure.  In class we discussed possible places our figures might be during the American Revolution.  We also got a chance to use perspective in out paintings.  The backgrounds could go beyond two dimensional, and we could work on making things appear three dimensional.

The Wax Museum is going to take place on March 4, 2011 at 1:30pm.  All parents should be receiving an invitation from their child to attend the Wax Museum.

Fractions Divide the Class By: Lydia

Math has been very exciting for Mr. church's fifth grade class.  We just started a new unit in fractions.  Many of the students in the class remembered being introduced to fractions last year.  The first lesson was in the two parts of a fractions, the numerator and the denominator.  A fraction describes a part of a whole number.  Fractions are all the numbers that go between two whole numbers.  The diagram (to the right) shows thirteen different ways the whole number one can be divided.  There have been a few very challenging problems in the math packets this week.

Learning how to simplify fractions is something we worked with on Thursday.  If you find a number that can go into both the numerator and denominator you can simplify the smaller fraction.

We have also had the chance to work with improper fractions and mixed numbers.  An improper fractions contains a numerator that is greater than the denominator.  If numerator is larger we know that this fraction contains whole numbers.  The improper fraction can be converted into a mixed number.

Playing with a Master BY: Tony & Owen

In the Piano Lab with Ms. Maillet we have been studying composers from different musical periods.  Most recently we have studied the pieces created by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  Mozart was a prolific and influential composer during the Classical era.  He composed over 600 different works and is one of the worlds youngest childhood prodigies.  

The fifth grade along with fourth grade and the upper division will be visited by Roberto Plano, a world renowned pianist from Italy. This Tuesday, February 15th, students will have the chance to see this world musician in action.  Some students may even be lucky enough to play with the artist.  Only a few schools have been afforded the privilege of having Mr. Plano visit their school.  Our new piano lab was something Mr. Plano wanted to see, and experience.  The students that are selected to play with Mr. Plano will be performing, Menuet by J.S. Bach.  Everyone in the class is very excited to see his performance.

Roberto Plano plays Brahms, Intermezzo op.118/2

Writer's Voice BY: Mae & Andrew

Poet and children's author Lyn Littlefield Hoopes, visited Mr. Church's class recently and taught an exercise to strengthen our ability to listen to our writer's voice.  Mrs. Hoopes introduced the poetry we would write, by first introducing photographs she took at  Yosemite National Park. She shared a few poems that she created in the moment.  Our poetry would be based on paintings from the famous artist Vincent Van Gogh.  We are going to write two poems about these paintings.  The first poem we worked on was from the perspective of something in the painting.  After this poem is finished we are going write a second poem from a different perspective in the painting.  Here are two examples of poems that students have written;              

           

Moon Glow                                                           Lake of Life

By Mae                                                                 By Andrew

Swirly the sea                                                       I am the lake

Wavy the night                                                      Lapping quietly

Stars like fireflies                                                 At the shore

Glow oh so bright                                                 The wind

And I                                                                    Lightly rippling

The moon                                                             My surface

The leader of light                                               Churning the reflections

Look down over town                                            Of boats

Lighting the night                                                 Into beautiful patterns

The Cypress curves up                                           And designs of art

My glow flickering down                                       The leaves

The stone bear of the hills                                    Of willow trees

Is guarding her cub                                               Floating down

The city below                                                      Ever so slowly

She’ll give it some love                                         Landing silently

The river of sky                                                    In the water

Rolls like the sea                                                  A frog hops into me

The sight’s just enough                                         Scared off

To really calm me                                                 By father and son

The sapphire sky                                                  Cattails waving gently

The buttercup stars                                              In the breeze

The light and the love                                          Birds calling softly

Shining down                                                        In the still

Is enough to be shared                                          A fish jumps

All around                                                            Landing with a splash

                                                                            Its mouth full

                                                                            With juicy fly     

                                                                            A water lilly    

                                                                            Floating still

                                                                            A bee pollinates

                                                                            Its silver bloom

                                                                            I am nature

                                                                           This lake within me

World of Wax BY: Clara & Patrick

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

We the fifth grade are tirelessly researching figures from the American Revolutionary War.  Our note cards have been written, and we stand now on the eve of Essay drafting.  The class used a program called Inspiration9 to organize our notes in a web.  The benefit of using Inspiration9 is that the program can convert your web into a outline of events.  This research and writing will bring us to a day of presentations.  For the next two weeks we will be working in Art class on the backdrops that we will accompany us at the Wax Museum on March 4th.  

The Wax Museum is a lot more than just reciting a speech and standing in front of a background.  We will be dressing in period clothing supplied to us from the Friend's costumes in the attic.  Our speeches will also give us the chance to become the figure we chose to study, and for just a few minutes we will be those historical figures repeating speeches to the guests at our museum.

Some of the figures you can expect to see are Judith Sergant Murray, Salem Poor, Sam Adams, John Hancock, and Sir William Howe.  We’ll see you in March!

Rube Goldberg BY: Anitra & Kate

Rube Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor. Goldberg is best known for a series of popular cartoons he created displaying complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways—now known as Rube Goldberg machines. In science we are trying to build these Rube Goldberg contraptions.  

The task for our machines is to either catch a wolf or a pig.  All the machines have incorporated six of the seven simple machines in them; the lever, the pulley, the gears, the incline plains, the screw, the wheel and axle and the wedge. There are conditions that all the groups must follow and meet.  Each group must have five transfers in energy.  These transfers can include; potential, kinetic, sound, magnetic, or rotational energy. All machines have to fit within a square meter, and any electricity on the machine must be battery powered.  All machines can only be touched once, and most of the groups will start their machine this way.

Some of the groups have become very creative with giving their machines names and themes. Some names include; Reggae Nation, City Christmas, Outdoors, Bright Colors and Lights, and Olympic Pig Society.

The 5th grade will be presenting the machines to family and friends on Thursday, March 10th.  We hope to see you there!