We took a up-close look at some amazing animals in class. We looked at cockroaches because they go through incomplete metamorphosis. We were able to observe how the nymphs were very similar to the adults. Then we looked at darkling beetles. The larva are called meal worms and look like little brown striped worms. They crawled all over the place. The pupa looked weird, but we could see where the eyes would be and the legs were forming. Also, the pupa hardly moved. Finally the adults were beetles. They looked totally different from the larva and pupa! Then we picked an insect that went through complete metamorphosis and one that went through incomplete metamorphosis and did a project showing that insect or amphibian at each stage. Check out what we learned!
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Mrs. Mauk needs garden help! Her garden wilts soon after being watered. Could it be the soil she's using? The students wrote a testable question: Which type of soil will absorb the most amount of water? Then they developed a way to test the soil. The unanimous decision involved placing a small sample of soil in a coffee filter, pouring water into the soil, and measuring the amount of water that drained out. We headed to the lab. They discovered that soil sample 2, which turned out to be clay, absorbed slightly more water than sample 1, which was sand. Both the clay and the sand absorbed much more than sample 3, which was bagged compost purchased at a store. Because the compost contains the nutrients, but allows water to drain through, the 5th graders thought Mrs. Mauk should mix some sand and clay into the compost for this year's garden. Thanks to several generous benefactors who funded our Donor's Chose project, we now have a class set of really great headphones! Thank you!!! In celebration of the winter olympics, the science and math class joined together to have our own version of the olympics. In science class we used the steps of the scientific method to determine how friction plays a part in how fast a person can skate. We tested sock feet and bare feet and then strapped on some nifty wax paper feet that the students had made in math class. We held speed trials to select a skater since what we wore on our feet was the only variable. Once we were finished testing, recording data, and writing our conclusions we headed over to the gym for a final skate for the gold. Here's some of the action...Here's more of the action...As a review of all of the physical science topics we learned this fall, we made interactive word walls. Student groups were given a topic and several science words that went with that topic. They had to decide on how to put together a word wall that demonstrated those words. We had a really fast gallery walk of all of the projects during a freak snow storm. The students voted for their favorite word wall and quickly went home. The winning word walls are now hanging in the hallway.
Some of the classes earned Fun Friday again. The topic this time? Eggs. We learned how to tell if an egg is hard boiled or not by spinning it. We learned it is REALLY hard to break a raw egg by squeezing it. We used air pressure to suck a peeled egg into a bottle. And we learned how sodas can damage our teeth. We have spent some time learning about forces like gravity, friction, and magnetism. We have also learned the steps to making a science experiment. We were given statements about the forces we've learned about and had to make our own experiment to test to see if the statement was a myth or not. We had to write testable questions, a hypothesis, identify the variable we were testing, the variable we were measuring and the variables we were keeping the same. We had to create charts and graphs and record our data and then write a conclusion. Check out some of the animoto videos about our experiments!
After learning about insulators and conductors, the students were challenged to build a container that would keep an ice cube from melting. They had to construct their container at school from materials that they found. I saw LOTS of creative ideas! Tomorrow we try their containers out with an ice cube made from 50ml of water. The students in all four classes earned a fun day in science today. Since we have recently been studying the states of matter, the properties of matter, and solutions and mixtures, we spent our fun time in the lab learning about colloids. We had two colloids that we investigated. One of them was just cornstarch and water mixed together. You can find the recipe for the other one at the bottom of our post for today. We did slow poke tests, fast poke tests, bounce tests and stretch tests. Check out our Fun Friday photos! |
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. AuthorWe are the 5th graders at Paradise Intermediate. Join us on our science journey this year as we stretch our imaginations and make new discoveries! Archives
November 2017
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