Studying Heroes by Benji B

We are studying heroes this year. Each person in our class chose one attribute of a hero. Here are a couple of the attributes that some of the people in our class studied: BRAVE, OPTIMISTIC and COURAGEOUS.

Also we explored heroes on myhero.com

We read stories about amazing people.  I watched a film about Nelson Mandela. He is amazing.  He fought for the rights of others, even after being in jail for 27 years.  He has attributes like patience, strength and determination.  He was a great leader and example for his country and our class.

Thank- you By Caroline S.

Caroline S.

This year our class worked on thank you notes to objects. Here is an example:

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear people that sing in the hallways in front of our classroom,

Thank you for letting me realize how annoying it is, so I don’t do it to other people. Now I know what distraction is…

Yours truly,

Caroline

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Our inspiration was Leah Dieterich who made a book filled with all her thank you’s called “thx thx thx thank goodness for everything”. It helped us practice gratitude and consider things about our school we appreciate.

We thought of things like the glue guns of the bay art, the library, baby chicks, geese that poop on the lower field, silver shiny laptops, gardens, the fruit stand by MP1, the mile run on a hot day, art, the upper field and blacktop, our beautiful campus, and Ring Mountain. Come by and see them posted in our classroom. THX!

Peter Menzel by Tess

In our Global Studies unit, we (room 20) have been talking and doing a lot of things around the subject of poverty.  We began the unit looking at Peter Menzel’s pictures. We saw images of what the world eats in a week and also what people around the world use in their homes (materials). We got to see data like obesity rates and poverty lines in places other than the US. It was cool to see that some family’s most valued thing was a beat up old TV, when we have modern flat screen TVs that we think are cool but are not our favorite things. We watched a film about Peter Menzel’s travels and how he works. It was interesting to see how poverty rates, obesity, and age varied from country to country.

We wonder if some of the families that don’t have a lot of stuff are happier then families with a lot of stuff? We were able to have a good conversation about want vs. need. Some of the Qualities of life we think are most important are health care, clean water, clean air, family and friends, an out door place to run around, and food.  Every human being deserves to have their needs met and to have clean water, healthy food, school, healthcare and someone to love them.

by Tess

by Tess

Stolen Laptops by Lily T.

The weekend of October 15, thieves squeezed their car through the gate in the carpool circle. Somehow they got their car up to the Upper School. For some reason the thieves picked our classroom to break into. They used some sort of ax to get in. They managed to pull the laptop cart all the way into their car. Do you know how heavy the cart was with 20 laptops inside? 468 pounds! Can you believe it? The police investigated and found out they broke in between 12:30 am to 6:00 am. The police still are on the case but have been noticing patterns from other schools who have also been robbed. We all hope the police catch the thieves so we can get our computers back but we are glad nobody got hurt.    Here are some pictures of the evidence. 

Chuck fixing the door.

1st grade buddies by Alec

A couple weeks ago we got our first grade buddies! This was new to us because it was finally the first year we were the older buddies. We started off with an activity where a first grader chose a book and the fifth grader read it to them. Most of us read one or two books or one and a chapter of something that was around 100 pages. After that we got some time to do free choice! It’s a period where you can play anything in the classroom.

Our next visit involved naming our school chicks. Everybody thought of a name and we did a vote (I think the winner was Oreo because it was black and white). After that we got some time to go outside to play around. Some of us played soccer, some played tag and others played in the sandbox. Our third visit we paired up and thought of some super hero’s. We made up our own and gave them powers that could save people. Some of us got carried away and made fighting powers but some stayed on track to make stuff like strength to pick up trees. The next visit (our fourth) we found board games to play. I played Guess Who™ and Candyland™. We have not gone back but I can’t wait to and the next time and this time we get our own buddies! 

Concrete Poems by Sophie N.

At the very beginning of the year we made something called a concrete poem. A concrete poem is a poem, which is conveyed partly or wholly by a picture with words surrounding it. Here are some examples that some people in our class made. It was neat to see what others created.

Photos taken by Sophie

Photosynthesis By Owen

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Photosynthesis

In Science for our first mini-unit in ecosystems we studied Photosynthesis.

Parts of plants used to photosynthesize are

• Chloroplast 

(See photo)

• Chlorophyll ( Also shown in photo, the little green things inside)

• Stomata

• Xylem

The actual scientific equation is 6Co2+12H2O=C6H12O6+6o2+6H2o=1 molecule of glucose, which is a sweet sugary substance. The stomata is in charge of taking in Co2 from the atmosphere. The xylem is a tube at the base of the leaf that makes water flow to the chloropyll in the chloroplast. The chlorophyll is the part of the leaf that mixes all the ingredients. It also absorbs sunlight energy to break appart elements and reconfigure them. As a result you get glucose which is the building block for plant growth.

Spanish Report by Elliott

This year in Spanish we have been learning about objects and how many there are in images Kelly shows us. One of the very fun projects we did is to make slides on power point that say things like ¿Que es? And ¿Que son?. Then we took pictures off the web and posted them under the question. We presented them to the class and they had to answer the question. Some of the people and things posted were Justin Bieber, Domos and ninja cats. One other thing we learned in Spanish this year is numbers. Also this year we have learned classroom expressions. Last year we learned a lot about animals and colors. We are building on last years knowledge.

¿Que es?

Photo Credits

http://anders.home.die.net/domo-kun/
http://www.catspictures.net/2008/12/ninja-cats.html

Reading by Luc

 In room 20, we have reading groups with partners. Each group gets to choose which book they want to read. After they read their book they get to create a final project. My book is called The City Of Bones it’s about vampires, werewolves and demons. It is fun to be able to pick our own books.  MK picks the class read yet allows us to pick partner reads ourselves.  It is cool to see what others pick, too.

 I

Four Winds Ropes Course by Henry

This is Henry H. here to tell you about the Four Winds Ropes Course. We went to the ropes course on 10-19-11. The teachers split us into groups of 10 and we had to work out different elements that required teamwork, courage, and leadership. The first elements were low to the ground while the later elements were four stories high! The picture below is how tall some of the elements were.

This is the main house of “St. Dorthy’s Rest. This is the place we stayed at after the ropes course. Some people say its haunted. Does this look haunted to you?We didn’t see anything haunted so i’m not convinced.

http://mindfulgrief.net/Resources.html

This is their symbol

http://www.teambuildingthatworks.com/

Four winds ropes course

This is a very pretty picture of Four Winds Ropes Course

http://www.teambuildingthatworks.com/location.html

Free The Children By Cally

Over 1.2 billion people in the world live in poverty. About 2 months ago, two very important people came to MCDS to talk to the upper school. Nicole and Derek work for Free the Children, a non-profit organization that works to help people all over the world to prevent things like child labor and unclean water and to try to build schoolhouses for education and hospitals for health care. Nicole and Derek told us what we could do to help and how we can create awareness about poverty. 30,000 children die every day from poverty-related causes. Now we know that we can help by raising money or adopting a village. If you are interested about free the children go to www.freethechildren.com. Craig Kielburger started the organization when he was 12 years old. Kids are continuing to help kids today around the world.

Tommy Greenwald By Lulu

This year MK read us a book titled Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to NOT Reading. This book is exquisite and had us laughing the whole way through.

If you haven’t read this book you will love it. I can’t stress that enough. And if you have read it and you didn’t like it, check your pulse, you may be dying.

Tommy Greenwald is a great man. My class sent him an email full of thanks and “we loved your book” letters. Guess what? He sent us back an email saying thank you. He also said we would get one of the first copies made of his second book. He promised to send us book marks which arrived a few days later, HOW COOL!!! He sent us a copy of his second book,Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Extra Credit, even before it has been published. MK will read it to us soon.

Physical Education by Hailey

This year we are doing a lot of units. From conditioning to volley ball. Right now we are in cross-country. We all have different teachers depending on what day it is. In this unit we do the mini marathon, sprints up the hill, the mile, and lots more. We always do the mile at the end of the unit. There are 5 P.E teachers .I love PE. Time to run around and be outside it great. I always dread Mondays because we don’t have P.E. We also have tons of other units including volleyball, soccer, conditioning, gymnastics, softball, football, Frisbee, and last but not least, basketball. On Friday we have C.T.F, which is capture the flag Friday. Or if it’s raining we will do smerf ball. I love C.T.F. It’s really fun. P.E is a huge part of MCDS I can’t imagine not having P.E four days a week. I feel really lucky to have such a great P.E. program With so many great teachers with experience. They seem to always try to make a great P.E. class.

I LOVE P.E!

Electives By Holden W

Electives are activities that are new to the 5^th graders, one of the electives times is Monday the other is on Friday. 5^th grade only does electives on Friday. Some examples of the electives offered are the following: makers club, sewing club, study hall, and art class, or film making. As you can see there are tons of different options. In January we will get to add an elective on Mondays. It is a great experience to choose a class you are interested in and to meet other upper school teachers.

Animal Masks By Kate

This year the 5th grade is making amazingly alive animal masks, we are building and creating in art with our teacher, while learning amazing things about them in science, too!

Now you might think “Oh that’s a piece of cake” but if you think this, you are very WRONG

Well it is actually very hard! Most of the steps take a very long time! Not to mention the drying time.

THE STEPS WE TOOK

1. Take a look at pictures of animals, number them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of choice
2. Art teacher gave us our animals and pictures
3. Simple drawing of your animal
4. Map out how to make the mask on paper
5. Cut out a cardboard hat to fit your head
6. Decide what form you want your mask
7. Start chunking newspaper and mold it to the hat
8. Check for bubbles in the news paper
9. Paper mache the newspaper mask head
10. Paint it, YOUR DONE!

Homework for The Week by Lucie

Hello I am going to tell you about what our Work for the Week is like in MK’s class. On Monday, our teacher gives us a piece of colored paper with our work of the week. It will have math for one night, then say when it is due. We also get reading assignments. We have to read every night for 30 minutes and record how many pages you read in a reading journal. We also get Wordly Wise homework. This is vocabulary practice with a word list that we study and practice. We turn in all our homework on Friday. Every other Friday we have a Wordly Wise test on our vocabulary words. It is challenging yet fun to have more homework in upper school. Here are some images of our work.

Email Accounts by Alex

This year we get our own student email. We can use use it to email other people and 

teachers about schoolwork. We are not allowed to chat or say stuff that is not related to 

school like “what’s up.” It is hosted by google but it is for MCDS. Our email address is 

our first initial and our last name. We can use google docs and the other apps on gmail.

                              Here is an example of a productive e-mail.

by Alex

Here is an example unproductive one 

by Alex

Reading Partners by Ellie

This year we have reading partners. MK chose them for us; once we have our partners we get to choose a book. When we have the book we to show it to MK she gives us the OK and writes it down on a big piece of paper so that everyone can see who’s reading what genre. Then we start reading. We have about two weeks to read the book. Each day we catch up with our reading partners to see where we are at, and then we make a plan for that night of how many pages to read. When we are done reading the book, we do a final project and we present it to the class. We read in partnerships because it teaches us to think creatively and understand the book on a deeper level. We have meaningful conversations about characters and get to share our point of view. It also lets us read slower and really understand the book and make connections so that we can look at it from a different perspective. We have really enjoyed this experience to know ourselves better as readers.