Week 17- School Play & Factors

This week on the reading test my students had to write about someone who inspires them. Riley made my day when she wrote about me.



We have been learning about factors in math so here are a few of the pages we made in our interactive notebooks for math. On this page we listed our vocabulary on different colored sticky notes. You can see the way we do factors. We call them factor rainbows. It helps the kids know when to stop listing factors. When you get to the other side of the rainbow you're finished.



Mrs. James, our math coach, came in Thursday and made a flipbook with the kids too. They also solved some fun math puzzles. She left me a 10,000 chart. I've never seen a chart so big! I plan to put it up next week and start using it when we return from Christmas break.



Today the drama club performed their play, Hansel and Gretal. Ryan and Colette were the lead actors.







I had several students in the school drama club and I'm so proud of each and every one of them. Their performance was amazing!



STUDENTS: It is almost time for Christmas break. Tell us about a Christmas tradition your family has.

Week 16- Unfair Taxes & Handwashing

Since this week was Hand Washing Week we did a little experiment. I gave each kid some germs (special powder) to rub into their hands. Then we looked at our hands under a black light. Then I had different kids "wash" their hands different ways: water only, soap and water, and hand sanitizer. Here are the results.

Washed with soap and water


Washed with hand sanitizer

Washed with water only


The kids were a bit grossed out when we talked about how hand sanitizer kills the germs but leaves them on your hands. Maybe we'll have some good hand washing taking place now.

We are also learning about events leading up to the Revolutionary War. I randomly picked a king (in this case we used a queen) and members of Parliament. We also had a tax collector (pictured in the back).


Each of the colonists earned skittles. Then the king and Parliament declared taxes on certain items to help pay for the French and Indian War.



After this the kids could understand why the colonists felt like this was so unfair. Here you can see a student trying to figure out how he can pay the tax on pencils when he has more pencils than skittles.



Our class has also been learning about the digestive system. I grossed a lot of them out this week with the video below. It shows the steps in the digestive system. Their reaction was priceless!



STUDENTS: This week we helped our nurse start an experiment at school. Tell our readers about the experiment and what you did. I would also like you to make a prediction about what you think will happen with our experiment and why you think that. Don't forget to "kill" because!