The Last Hurrah...

Hi Everyone!
I hope you all had a nice time with your families this weekend. I can't believe that our time together is coming to an end. We had a great turnout on Friday at our Hall of Presidents & First Ladies. Thank you for helping out with the great costumes! Many of you found some excellent treasures at the local consignment shops and at the Salvation Army. Thanks also for coming back to help out with tie-dying in the afternoon! I could not have done it without you! Here's a few pictures from our recent adventures...

Our Egg Drop Containers were a huge success! Room 5 students obviously know a great deal about technology & design. Check out our photos:

If a tree falls in the woods, can you hear it? Well, I did! It fell across Whitney Street during a brief wind storm Tuesday night and then was rolled across my driveway. Luckily, no one was hurt!

Despite the sizzling temperatures, our field trip to Broadmoor Wildlife Sactuary was a huge hit. We learned many interesting facts and I think many of us plan to return...perhaps in the fall!

Presidents & First Ladies was a wonderful event for Room 5. We shared our research with our families, friends, and fellow Zeh community members. Our class was knowledgeable and respectful too! I am so proud of their hard work! ( Not all couples are pictured as I had some trouble uploading these for some reason.)

John & Abigail Adams

James & Dolley Madison

George & Martha Washington

Laura Bush

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Theodore & Edith Roosevelt

John & Jackie Kennedy

Abraham & Mary Todd Lincoln

Frances & Grover Cleveland

Louisa & John Quincy Adams

After all our hard work in the morning, we kicked back with some extra playground time and did a little tie-dying. Thanks for all the donated supplies and volunteers!

Only 2.5 days left until summer break...and my 4th graders become 5th grade students! At work and at play, we have had a great year! We made our goal of earning 200 compliments this year...we earned 239 to date. I am looking forward a wonderful couple of days with my class and a fantastic end to our year!

-JoAnne Gorham

Updates!

Hi Everyone,

I hope everyone has enjoyed the fabulous spring days that we have been experiencing. I love seeing the trees in bloom, even if my allergies do not!

Life is pretty fast and furious both in and out of school for all of us right now. Hopefully, this post can fill you in, just in-case you've been caught up in soccer-scouts-recital-graduation-1st communion-mania!

Here's the update from Room 5:

Chorus Concert: Our concert was fantastic on Tuesday evening. The students were well-prepared by Mrs. Stonebraker and put on a wonderful show as you can see by our videos.

Science: We wrapped up our unit on animal adaptations with a test this week. We have spent many weeks exploring the various vertebrate groups and their unique adaptations. Our last unit this year will focus on plants and their adaptations. Model plant project is due on Wednesday, May 14th!

Social Studies: Our travels across the country have led us to the Southwest Region. We are exploring the Hopi Native American tribe. We will be having a test on this region SOON! Our last stop will be the The West (including Alaska and Hawaii).

Mathematics: We have been "Mathathletes" in Room 5. We are in training and keeping our skills sharp! We have reviewed double-digit mulitplication as well as short/long division. We have practiced tree diagrams (organized lists). We are having a test on data & graphing tomorrow. Look for a study guide for a test on measurement sometime next week. Our next unit will be on probability.

Pictures from our data field trip to Church Street. We keep track of traffic on Church Street on a beautiful Friday morning. We also discovered that Northborough is a friendly place to live...many cars honked and waved as we sat and collected data. Special thanks to Mrs. Ransden for accompanying us on our walk!

After we had the data, we made beautiful bar graphs!

Research Writing/Computer Lab: Room 5 is all abuzz with our research on U.S. Presidents & First Ladies. Both Mrs. Remillard and Mr. Gervais have been assisting us with our research in library and in computer lab.

Yoga Lesson: Our class had a special visit from Yogi Al for Kaitlin's birthday on Wednesday, May 7th. We all got to stretch out and de-stress on the stage in the cafeteria. Special thanks to Yogi Al for visiting and for Kaitlin's family for arranging this fun activity for our class!

Reminders:

1. Thursday 5/15 and Friday 5/16 will be our Mathematics MCAS sessions. Once again you may supply your child with a "reasonable" amount of hard candy or chewing gum. Lollipops, jolly ranchers, and smarties are all good choices. Please remember that we are nut-free in room 5! Additionally, you may wish provide your child with a bottle of water and an extra-healthy snack for those days. We have practiced dilligently and we are so ready for this!
2. I will be sending home a final book order this week. This is a good opportunity to purchase some new summer reading at very low prices. Please take a look and order if you find some interesting titles.
3. There will be no spelling or weekly geo this week!

Have a great week everyone!

-Mrs. Gorham

Hello Spring!

Hi Everyone!
I hope you have been enjoying the beautiful weather. I have been busy snapping lots of pictures of all the great activities that we have done over the past week. Here's the update from room 5:

Social Studies: We just finished up the Rocky Mountain Region with our test on Friday. We will be moving on to the Southwest next. If you have any photos or information that you want to share with us, please drop me an email. We love visitors! As a wrap up to our Rocky Mountain studies, the students completed a jigsaw activity where they became "experts" on one part of the chapter. The "expert" groups were then mixed up and each member of the new group had to share information. The children made FANTASTIC posters to showcase their expertise!

The Expert Groups created posters...

Once the posters were completed, sharing info with their jigsaw groups...

Mathematics: We also wrapped up our study on geometry with some fun activities. We did a little human geometry...

A right angle

A right triangle

Reflection (A flip)

Rotation (A turn)

Parallel lines

Acute angle

Straight angle

We also made Molas for symmetry! Check out our colorful bulletin board!

We also used fun foam to practice flips, slides, and turns!

Our last project was to make symmetry pictures. The students were given 1/2 of a magazine photo and they needed to draw the "mirror image". The final products were spectacular! Take a look:

Hannah's parachute

Patrick's heart

Lauren's alien

Anthony's Dr. Phil M&M

Taylor's hungry girl

Meg's magic wand

Ashley's goldfish

Taylor's banana carrot

Rachel's brush

Katie's bird

Reading: We are working on our tall tale character projects to wrap up our unit. Each child has a different character to research. I will post some pictures soon. After vacation, we will begin our next unit on mystery!

Science: We will be wrapping up animals and starting plants after vacation.

Writing: I have been using our writing time to sneak in a bit of extra math. We are working on data and graphs. After vacation, we will be working on our presidents and first ladies projects. The children received their research at library today. They should read over this research during vacation. I would read these sources before going to internet resources. Please use kid friendly search engines such as yahooligans, if you decide to surf the net at home. Feel free to visit the public libraries or book stores to find additional information. The bulk of the project will be done at school, but the children will need to dress up in costume as their person for our annual Hall of Presidents & First Ladies in to be held early June. More info to come on this.

Read Aloud: We are preparing for our project on fractured fairy tales. We have been reading the original fairy tales and then, several fractured versions of the tale. For example, we read Cinderella. Next, we read CindyEllen, CinderEdna, Bubba the Cowboy Prince, Cinder-Elly, and an Egyptian Cinderella. We did the same with Rumplestiltskin and the Three Bears. After vacation, the children will receive an at-home writing project where they will need to construct their own fractured fairy tale. Complete project details will follow on this. You may wish to start thinking about which tale you want to fracture. Don't start the project yet...just think of ideas. Please ask your child to explain what a fractured fairy tale is to you and let me know if they have any questions.

I hope everyone has a great April vacation. I am going home to New York for a few days to see my parents and then I will be back in Northboro to visit with friends. I am also looking forward to taking Emma to see the Big Apple Circus in Boston too! This is our first visit to the circus with her. Hopefully, the clowns won't be too scary!

Be safe and have fun!

-JoAnne