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December 11, 2009

NEWS BRIEFS

LEGO Robotics Teams - Both of our incredible 5th, 6th, and 7th grade robotics teams did a superb job at the Sinclair Regional FLL Tournament, and both earned invitations to the Ohio State FLL Championships! More..
Social Studies/Class Project - We have a homework project due this week: Trade Fair. More..
Reading - We just completed historic and realistic fiction novels. Now we are reading fantasy and fairy tales. More..
Science - We will take an exam over earth science topics from 3rd and 4th grade this week. More..
Math - We are studying data and statistics. More..
Scholastic Books - Parents can now order books from Scholastic online. More..
Grades - I appreciate your considerable patience over the past couple of weeks as I worked to balance the robotics teams' peak time/hours with the usual ongoing classroom responsibilities. Posted grades are current as of this past Friday with the exception of a couple of assignments that were just turned in.

Carlisle's Hotshots Robotics Teams

on their way to State Championships!

Photographs by Mrs. Nettling, Mrs.Holmes, and Mrs. Barger

ROBOTICS
Hotshots Robotics Teams Moving on to State Championships! On December 5th our Carlisle Hotshots Robotics teams competed at the Sinclair Regional FLL Tournament! The teams were flanked by wonderfully supportive parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, and classmates who came to cheer them on as the teams celebrated their work on projects, technical, teamwork, and table missions. The Smartbot Hotshots won the second-place "Champions" trophy; the Indibot Hotshots won the first place "Project" trophy, but it was what they discovered along the way that was so important! All-in-all, 23 local teams competed, and only four teams could be selected to move on to state competition. Both our teams made it! Both the Indibot Hotshots and the Smartbot Hotshots will move on to compete at the FLL Ohio State Championships! LEGO Robotics page...

SOCIAL STUDIES

Homework Project. Before there was money to make purchases in the New World, settlers and Native Americans used trade to get what they needed and wanted. On December 18th, we will hold our Trade Fair. It will provide a strong backdrop for some lessons in economics, including supply and demand. Students should be working on their homemade items so that they will be ready by the 18th. Students need to try to use items already around the house, or, if craft items must be purchased, try to keep the costs down to $5 or less. Examples of trade fair items made by students in the past have included:

friendship bracelets; other homemade jewelry
bookmarks
stationery
picture frames (using items like popsicle sticks or things from nature)
Christmas decorations
sock puppets
cookies or candies
hair decorations/ribbons
rock or fossil collections
pet rocks
sand paintings
see ideas at Kaboose.com or do an Internet search (just enter "kids crafts" or "homemade gifts kids" on your favorite search engine)

It is really unpredictable which items will draw the most competitive trades. The most desired object I have witnessed at these class trade fairs was a student-crafted wreath made out of dog bones. Students were really excited to try to get this for their own dog, and the resulting trades were intense!

Picture: "Barter is Better...An Essential Living Experiment!" by Robert Harris Brevig.

Explorers Festival

Highlighting the fun of reading and learning about First Americans, Explorers, and Early Settlements, students dressed the part enjoying the day as a character from that period at their 5th Grade Explorers Festival!

READING

Reading Connections with History. We completed the historical fiction novels Morning Girl and Pedro's Journal, plus the non-fiction novel Eating the Plates. Students worked on projects and written reflections as they completed the novels, which all had a social studies connection (Indians, exploration, and early settlements).

Reading Connections with Science.

We also finished reading the novel classic The Big Wave, by Pearl S. Buck. It offered a social studies extension (cultures) a science connection (geology) which reviewed students' 3rd and 4th grade backgrounds in earth science, a topic that will show up in their 5th grade OAT testing in April. We also read the Magic School Bus Inside the Earth and watched science videos on volcanoes, rocks, erosion, and oceanography. We will follow up this instruction with a geology test on Thursday this week. Watch for the study guide to come home on Monday. Please remember that study guides should remain in students' file pockets so they also have them when they are at school.

Next Genre: Fantasy. We have switched genres now, and are reading the fantasy The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (Narnia series). Students have formed mini-bookclubs, "Literature Circles", to share what they experience as they read. For each reading assignment they take different roles, such as "Word Wizard", "Connector", "Literary Luminary", "Summarizer", "Discussion Director", and "Illustrator" to bring different dynamics to the discussions. These roles are based on the best-practice works of Harvey Daniels.

Fairy Tale Trials. In ATP, we will combine reading, social studies, and higher-level thinking skills. Students will be reading and analyzing fairy tales, including Rumplestiltskin, Robin Hood, and Peter Pan, told from two different points of view. They will follow up by putting the characters in these stories on trial!

SCIENCE and MATH

Statistics in Math/Science. We researched data and statistics about Carlisle and made posters of the data we thought would be important for city council in making decisions about transportation in our city. What a great exercise this was! We learned a lot about our community, but even more important, we discovered that not all the data would be relevant to this topic. Now we will go forward combining science and math skills as we participate in the Science Court program on statistics. Students looked for patterns in data, and analyzed graphs to determine if there was some connection. Is the mayor guilty of negligence for not taking action against a possible alien invasion when the data showed that more lefties in the population

matched the pattern of increasing UFO sightings?

HOME CONNECTION

Scholastic Books. Your children are great readers! Are you worried about keeping enough good books in their hands, especially over the break? Parents of children in my class can purchase books from Scholastic's Arrow Book Club online! Using a credit card, parents no longer have to watch for order forms to come home, nor do they have to fill out a form and send money in to school. All this can be taken care of by visiting our class's online site. Just as it is with the paper forms -- and MUCH more convenient -- any order placed on our classroom's account online has the additional benefit of bonus books for our classroom library! To order, click on this link, click the button indicating that you are a parent, and login using the username and password I gave you by email! http://www.scholastic.com/bookclubs

Thanks for all you do to send your child to school ready to learn!

Mrs. Nettling

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