Key Idea Science Project

Students created science projects to teach key ideas from our Earth's Changing Surface Science Unit.

Nate, Connor, Owen & Andrew-Slope & Erosion


Katie, Maeve, & Mia Landforms & Landscapes


Rocks by Maggie

Art Appreciation-Winged Victory of Samothrace

Art Appreciation

By:Katie

 Mrs.Knight came to our classroom to share some facts about the Winged Victory of Samothrace. We learned that a geologist found ruins of the statue. She had arms and a head except they didn't find them yet. They didn't find the right wing so, they made a replica of her left wing. She was originally placed in Greece in a temple honoring greek gods and goddesses. People believe that there was an earthquake that knocked her off the cliff that was carved to look like the front of a ship and she broke. She is now placed in the Louvre  in Paris, France. The statue is made out of marble. We learned a lot thanks to Mrs. Knight's art appreciation lesson.

We learned that this statue was inspired by Nike the Greek goddess of  victory.  

Ethan Long

                                        Ethan Long
                            By: Maggie,Natalia,and Diana                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Ethan Long is a famous author and illustrator for kids. His illustrations tell the whole story, not just the words. We pretended to be interviewers and Ethan Long, and we even video taped each other. We read a book by him and filled out plot charts. It was really fun because if you fill out a plot chart on a book it makes a summary. Here are some books by Ethan Long: My Dad My Hero, Me and My Big Mouse, Bird and Birdie, Clara and Clem, Camellia,  The Wing Wing Brothers, The Croaky Pokey,The Book that Zack Wrote, and Up, Tall, and High. This class is interested in Ethan Long because he is coming to Dryden school ! We wanted to have some background knowledge about him.

Volcano Project

We are doing a volcano project. Where we can pick a volcano with a group of students and make a model volcano and then teach the class about that volcano . The best part the is the volcano is going to explode!!!     

    Volcano Project Playlist 
(More Videos To Come)                                    

                                        

 

Ethan Long books

This afternoon, we read a variety of Ethan Long books to get to know the author who is visiting Dryden next Thursday.  Partners read different books, summarized them, and then analyzed the characters, illustrations, messages, and purpose Ethan Long had for writing his books.  They then took this information and created mock interviews with "Ethan Long".  Each partner group had an interviewer, and a member who would take the perspective of Ethan Long during the interview.

Our Ethan Long Interview Playlist

Book Reading/"Ethan Long" Interview Playlist

Candy Data project by Mrs. Greazel

We've been working on an exciting project and got engrossed in the business letter writing portion of it this afternoon.  We've been analyzing the candy data we collected on Halloween, and have been drawing conclusions and deciding who would want to know about this data. 

Each student chose a different group to communicate our data to.  We have students contacting candy companies, local stores, the mayor, doctors, dentists, charities, & schools to communicate the important data to them so that they can take action. It is so fun to see the students communicating for authentic, real world purposes. 

Our data

Students communicating to candy companies identified manufacturers and analyzed the data to look for trends across the each manufacturer's candy.

Students contacting stores analyzed the data to find the most popular and least popular types of candy. 

Demetri & Anzhelo thought the mayor should be notified about how much candy kids are collecting on Halloween. 

Since our maximum showed that one student collected 437 pieces of candy, this group focused on what to do with all the excess candy. They plan to contact charities and schools to suggest organizing candy collections for next year.

One group even called Glueckert Funeral Home to find out more information about how much candy was collected.

Mrs. Parker has been helping us with this project.  

Veterans' Day Rocks!

Veterans' Day Rocks!

By:Maeve and Katie

Today, the whole school went to an assembly to honor our veterans! At the assembly Katie and Connor had their grandpa's there and they said what their names were and their branch of service. After all the kids said what their veteran's name and branch of service was, Mr.D sang America the Beautiful and we sang This Land is Your Land. After the assembly, Connor's grandpa came to share some facts about his time in the Army.  Katie's grandpa came also and talked about his time in the Navy. It was very exciting to hear that Mr.Ryerson (Katie's grandpa) had to use latitude and longitude to be in the navy and we were just learning about that! What a special way to celebrate Veterans' Day!

This is Mr.Benson talking about where he traveled with the Army.

This is Connor and Katie waiting to speak about their Grandpa's! 

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Science project fun!! by Maeve

We have been working on our science projects for the past few weeks!! The first step we did was pick out what we really wanted to research about. You either did a project about volcanoes or mountains. Most people picked volcanoes. Only a few picked mountains.

 The next step was to research. Everyone picked to use a different type of note taking structure. The most popular structure was boxes and bullets. We all got all different topics.

The step after that was to start your project. Everyone had a different project the most popular project was posters or slideshows. When you present some groups have props or even hats made out of paper of volcanoes or mountains. Most groups used paper stuff. They used the paper for diagrams of volcanoes.

 The last step is to present. The group that is up next goes and what ever the project they did they show it to us. The groups when they are done presenting the other people ask questions.

Mustafa, Jakub & Nickolai teachinb about how Volcanoes are formed.

 How Volcanoes are formed- Mustafa's Koma Koma video & googledoc

Maggie, Diana, Natalia, & Mia showed us the differences between underwater & land volcanoes.  

Nico, Amina, & Jameson informed us about how volcanic eruptions affect the landscape.

They made a play about King Volcano & Queen Lava affecting the landscape around them.

Connor, Nate & Faiz taught us about how volcanoes change the surface of the Earth.

Connor, Nate & Faiz's google slideshow presentation

Anzhelo & Demetri teaching about tectonic plates and how they change the surface of the Earth.

Demetri & Anzhelo's google slideshow presentation

Andrew & Owen teaching about how mountains are made with a Google slide show and Koma Koma videos.

Andrew & Owen's google slideshow

Nate, Connor, & Faiz even remembered to give credit to the sites they used to get their information.

Maeve & Katie created a news report about how mountains change shape over time. 

Halloween party! by Natalia

Our class had a blast at our Halloween party! We played some puzzles like Halloween crossword puzzles. We played pumpkin bowling with Mrs. Greazel, we played bean bag toss with Mrs. Topps, we stacked plastic cups with Mrs. Smith, and we passed eye balls to each other with spoons with Mrs. Grave. At pumpkin bowling instead of a bowling ball we actually used a pumpkin! At cup stacking we had to build a pyramid fast! At the eye ball pass we put the tip of a plastic spoon in our mouths then passed a fake eye ball and we were not allowed to use hands! At bean bag toss, we got three turns to get 1 point 2 points or 3 points. We got to win prizes too!

Everybody's costume was great, as well. There was a monster soccer player and so many bananas!

The treats we had were delicious! We had chocolate cupcakes and cuties with celery on top. It looked like a pumpkin!

Our class had the best Halloween party ever! Thank you Mrs. Topps, Mrs. Grave, & Mrs. Smith for your planning, preparation and help!  Also, thank you to everyone who contributed!

Check Out These "Rock" Stars

These "Rock" Stars, wrote their own "Rock" songs about the processes we've been studying in Science that change the Earth's surface. 

                    "Earth's Changing Surface" by Maeve, Maggie, Katie, Natalia, and Demetri

"Weathering is Breaking Us Down" by Jameson, Diana, and Mia

"I'm Glad You Changed" by Andrew,Anzhelo, & Owen 

"Shake the Jar" to the tune of Shake it off by Amina, Faiz, & Connor

"Uptown Rock it Up" to the tune of "Uptown Funk" by Jakub, Nate, & Nico

Mustafa & Nickolai- "Glaciers Change the World"  to the tune of "Maps" 

The River Runs Wild by Faiz & Mrs. Greazel

                                                             RIVER EXPERIMENT

Mrs. Greazel:  Since we're studying rivers in Science, we decided to make our own rivers. This enabled us to observe the characteristics of a river, as it flows.  Last week 5 groups of students created and tested models of rivers. 

Faiz: This week we tried changing different variables in our rivers to see how these changes would impact the shape of the river. The different variables that we changed were the riverbed (rocks,sand, dirt and pebbles together instead of just sand),slope (different degrees of steepness and no slope), the riverbank (a rock border vs. aluminum sides) , obstructions, and different water presure/level.

Mrs. Greazel:  We behaved as scientists do by creating hypotheses, testing them by only changing 1 variable at a time, observing the results, and recording the results.  I asked questions to get the kids thinking during the 1st trial, and the kids quickly took over asking questions to help each other make detailed observations.

Jameson did an excellent job recording our trials.  Take a look at the videos and ask your child what observations they made. Ask them how the different variables changed the flow of the river, and what they noticed about erosion ad deposition during the trials.

Trial 1- less water

Trial 1 part 2 -more water

Trial 2- obstructions

Trial 3- slope- 1 block

Trial 3-slope-2 blocks

Trial 3- no slope

Trial 4-riverbank

Trial 5- riverbed

Math games by Nate

   This Friday, because our class did so well on our math test, we had math game day! We played math bingo, as well as double digit Top it. We also played a game where we rolled a dice 9 times and then tried to make the biggest number. We had to read numbers that reached into the 10 millions! Everyone had tons of fun playing math games! 

Landscape & Landform murals by Nico & Mrs. Greazel

Nico: We   are working on  landforms  and landscapes in Science. All of us are  super excited that we are working on landforms. We  worked in groups to make landscapes. We all made landforms like canyons,volcanic mountains,mountains,sand dunes,and rivers out of paper.

Mrs. Greazel: Once our landscapes were created, we labeled each landform. I took pictures of the kids outside on the playground and then the kids put pictures of themselves  in the landscapes zip- lining, climbing mountains and rock formations, hanging from cliffs and even bungee jumping!

We didn't stop there! We incorporated our study of prepositions into speech bubbles that explained what the kids were doing. Anzhelo exclaimed, "I'm back flipping above the cliff!"   Maeve proclaimed, "I'm zip-lining through the canyon!"

 Jakub, Amina, Nickolai, & Nate are all mountain climbing.  Check out Nico on the glacier.

Be careful, Connor, Anzhelo, and Owen!

Check out Maeve, Katie, Natalia & Mia zip-lining through the canyon, while Diana is scaling the side of the canyon.

The kids then looked at their picture and wrote about the small moment they were experiencing in the landscape.  Owen's story about hanging on the side of the cliff is a definite cliff hanger (pun intended)!  We focused on the small details that we would experience through our senses (wind hitting our face, hands burning from gripping the side of the cliff or rock formation, heart racing).  We also attempted to add juicy 4th grade words and dialogue to help our readers connect to our experience.

Faiz summed it up when he said, "We just did Science, grammar, and writing all at the same time!"

It was so exciting to see the kids synthesize all they have been learning into this fun, creative project that captured their imaginations.  They were so engrossed in the writing of these stories that they didn't want to stop.  When I announced it was time for recess, the class exclaimed "Awww, do we have to stop writing?"  That made my day!

On Friday, we shared our stories with a partner and worked on giving each other specific, helpful, respectful, and encouraging feedback to help improve each other's stories.

Nico: We are super happy that we are working on these. Our class is sailing through a lot this year about landforms.