Monster Exchange: The students have to write a description of a monster that they have created, then draw a picture of it. We are then exchaning descriptions with our pen pal class, and they are going to draw a picture of our monsters based of the descriptions we provide and vice versa. Then we are going to exchange back again and each student will get to read their description, show their pic of the monster and then show the pic that the other student drew and see if they are similar. We are going to be discussing points of view and how sometimes people can "see" totally different things even when they read the same description.
Mealworms: We are going to be learning about lifecycles by observing mealworms over 3 weeks. We will perform some experiments during this time to find out if the worms like light or dark better, if they like wind, etc. We will be keeping a "Worm Journal" as if we were our worms after reading "Diary of a Worm" to the class.
Day of the Dead: we will take a look at Mexican culture and their holiday The Day of the Dead, and compare it to a similar American holiday. We will learn a bit about the flight of the monarch butterflies as they travel to mexico (Mexicans beleive that when the monarchs arrive, which is the same week of day of the dead, that it is the souls of those that have passed coming back home). We will be creating sugar skulls and taking a look at the mexican art involved with the day of the dead.
Research project: The students will work in groups and choose a weird or spooky topic (like mummies, bats, spiders, the loch ness monster, etc) to research. They will learn how to pick out sources, make notes, make an outline, write a research paper, and cite sources. Then they will create a poster and presentation about their topic to give in class.
Pumpkin-ology: we will be doing a lesson on pumpkins where we use estimation skills to guess how big,the weight and how many seeds are in a pumpkin, and then actually measure and count to find out. We will graph the data. Then we will find out if the pumpkin sinks or floats in water and why. We will plant a pumpkin seed per student and measure it as it grows over a couple of weeks. We will also sample a variety of pumpkin foods!
Folktales: We will learn USA geography as we read various spooky stories and folktales from around the country. We will plot out the location of each story that we read on a map, and create a timeline of events from the different stories.
I am so excited, I think we are going to have such a great time!
Here are some pics of my journey in the 4th grade classroom:
The Native American Indian dancers came and did an assembly for us a couple of weeks ago! It was fantastic!!
Last week another 4th grade teacher invited me to come to her classroom during the reading class to enjoy pancakes! They had finished reading the first little house on the prarie book, and Ma had cooked pancakes on christmas morning in the book.
Some of the awesome biomes the 5th graders of the school created!
Some of my reading class students, not homeroom.
So in an attempt to get away from a "Halloween" theme, schools have renamed the parties "Fall" parties, and have scheduled them at Fall Break. However, when you put the parents in charge of the party, it's always going to just be a halloween party...... lol
My "mummy". We played the mummy game, and I had to wrap her up!
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