5th Grade: Color Poetry

Reflecting on life in a colorless world as we read The Giver, the kids realized the power in a color.  We thought about the personality of color, personified it.  The 5th graders each chose a color and wrote a poem.  The bext part of this assignment is that we collaborated with other GT 5th graders from our district.  We read each other’s poems and gave honest, constructive feedback to help make our poems stronger.  It was an awesome experience.

5th Grade: We Believe…

As part of our final philosophy project the kids used a word cloud app and green screen to share their top 5 characteristics and fifteen of their I BELIEVE statements. Here are a few of them.  You will see the rest on their finished Philosophy movies.  I hope you enjoy their beliefs about the world as much as I do.

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5th Grade: Thales

In fifth grade we have discovered that philosophers were the first mathematicians and scientists because they asked QUESTIONS and SOUGHT to understand how things in the world worked. We are studying some of these early mathematicians and scientists.

Several weeks ago I asked the 5th graders to find an accurate measurement of the light poles on our back parking lot.  The tricky part was that they only had a yardstick at their disposal.  Below you can see their thinking.  :)

After trying our hand at the light pole problem, the kids then heard the Story of Thales.  A man of firsts: the first known Greek philosopher and scientist, the first person associated with the use of deductive methods in mathematics.

We learned about two of his theorems:

The opposite angles of two intersecting lines are equal.

Any triangle inscribed within a half circle is a right triangle.

We heard a story that Thales figured the height of the Cheops by using his shadow, his height, and the height of the pyramid’s shadow.  No one is certain that this story is true, but it led to learning about proportions and what isn’t fun about that?

Below you will see the proportion problems researched, written, and solved by the kids.  They each researched the height of a famous landmark and used that information to determine it’s shadow.

5th Grade: The Unexamined Life

The unexamined life is not worth living.

-Socrates

To follow up our initial introduction to philosophy, the 5th graders were given a Quote Quizzler (or Fallen Phrase), revealing the well-known quote above.  After uncovering and thinking about the quote, the kids had a Socratic Dialogue to help think about what Socrates meant.  You can see a few clips below.Big Idea: After participating in the Socratic Dialogue, the fifth graders recorded what they believed the quote’s message was.  It will be interesting to revisit the quote as we continue to explore the world of philosophy. After our discussion, the kids were given a series of philosophers.  They had to research to discover when they were born.  They used an app to create a timeline.  This reinforced the idea that there have always been and will always be philosophers in our world.

4th and 5th Grade: Hour of Code

In fourth grade we have been studying the elements of art and how those elements are used by artists.  For Hour of Code, the kids used the drawing tutorial from Code.org. They then created a spiral drawing on Scratch, following another users directions.  This allowed them to become familiar with each script in Scratch.  Next up is to use what they have learned to create their own drawing game.

Molly       Joel      Evan

In 5th grade we are learning how to add and subtract integers.  It has been a challenge learning how to deal with positive and negative numbers, so to reinforce the rules I had the kids create a game in Hopscotch using a variety of equations involving positive and negative numbers.  They are just in the beginning stages.  But it was fun to see the creative ideas they came up with.  I can’t wait to play their finished games.



5th Grade: More Perfect World Projects

This week we finished up our introduction to philosophy, created Wonder Tree projects, caught up on HOE, played Get to Zero to help prep for working with positive and negative integers, and tried to FINISH up our Perfect World Projects.  We worked to close a lot of things out so that we are ready to continue moving forward after the Thanksgiving Break.

Here are some more Perfect World Projects:


5th Grade: Wonder Tree

Last week the kids participated in a 3-part argument that was designed to persuade them that they are in fact philosophers. This week we looked at the origin of the word philosophy and the tools a philosopher uses.  I shared a quote by Plato and connected it back to the argument from last week, the word origin and the tools.

Philosophy begins in wonder. And wonder is the attitude of the philosopher.

-Plato

After thinking about this quote and how it connects to our earlier learning, the kids created a Tree of Wonder in their Interactive Notebooks.  They listed questions that they wonder about.  I encouraged them to try and think of questions that we couldn’t just “google”, questions that aren’t easy to answer, that allow various perspectives.  Below is a video of a few of the questions from their trees.

A few of the fifth graders took their tree to the next level with some app smashing. They created a video about their personal wonder tree.  Most of the kids used Wordfoto, PicCollage, and iMovie.  They created a Haiku about philosophy, shared their top three wonders, and their tree itself.  They also searched for another quote involving wonder and included it in their project.


Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

5th Grade: Are You a Philosopher?

This week we started to dive into one of our main areas of study in 5th grade: Philosophy.  Step one is to convince the 5th graders that they ARE in fact philosophers…not always an easy task.

The kids started by recording what came to mind when they heard the word philosophy.  I always love hearing what the kids come up with: Fossils (made me laugh), thought, beliefs, rules, theories, religion, college, old people (Ha!), large books, words, ideas, smart.  Those are just a few of the many ideas brainstormed. We then discussed what we think of when we hear the word argument versus what it means to a philosopher.  Now it was time to do a 3 part argument to convince the kids that they were philosophers.  

Step 1: The kids brainstormed things they found hard to stop.  One kid insisted it was hard to stop buying Converse…I think I agree. 🙂  I also heard socializing, not using the internet, breathing, etc.  We tested whether we could in fact stop these behaviors.  We could.  Then we tried to stop thinking.  The kids all agreed that it was IMPOSSIBLE to stop thinking. Good to know. Argument 1: Philosophers find it hard to stop thinking and so do we. Check.

Step 2: I told the kids that my sister called to say that I had a new nephew.  I asked them what they new to be true about the baby.  The kids all agreed that is must be a boy.  All nephews are boys, this child is a nephew, it must be a boy. Argument 2: Philosophers think to figure things out and we do too. Check.

Step 3: I showed the kids a cheese grater and asked them what it was.  They all agreed that it was used to grate things like cheese, garlic and lemon peel.  I then had the kids brainstorm other ways the grater could be used.  They had to think from multiple perspectives.  Boy did they have some clever ideas: fly swatter, razor for a giant, jail cells for ants, torture device for cheese.  Argument 3: Philosophers think about things in a special way.  We clearly do too. Check.

It was a great lesson from a great book, Plato Was Wrong.  Thank you, David Shapiro, for making philosophy fun and accessible for all ages.  We can’t wait for our next lesson.

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5th Grade: Perfect World

To set the stage for The Giver my 5th graders have been thinking about what they consider a perfect world.  They read 4 poems from Langston Hughes, chose one, and rewrote it from through their vision of a perfect world.  The kids also created a visual.  The students chose various tools on the iPad to put their visual and their poem together.  Here are a few of the completed projects.

The Giver: 

Precision of Language is an important element of the community in The Giver. The main character spends nearly the entire first chapter trying to come up with the correct word to describe how he is feeling.  The word was apprehensive.  We did a quick write in our Giver Journal’s about a time we felt apprehensive.  

Photo Nov 11, 3 01 58 PM

5th Grade: Curiosity Hour

I introduced the kids to Curiosity Hour this past week and boy have they taken off with it.  Each kids is to choose something they want to THINK about, investigate, spend time with.  Once they have chosen their topic is time to LEARN everything there is to know about their chosen topic.  Once they have learned all that they needed or wanted to, they will CREATE a project and SHARE it with their peers.

Step 1 was to THINK about things they were curious about or wanted to learn.  Here are some examples of the planning process.


Learning: Here are the kids working on their Curiosity Hour Projects