5th Grade Tepee

        Several years ago I bought a pattern and several yards muslin from JoAnn Fabrics to make a tepee for my classroom. Needless to say, I ran out of time.  I went to a Parent Group meeting and asked for a volunteer to help out.  One of our wonderful parents came to my rescue. She cut out the pattern and sewed the tepee.  I purchased six PVC pipes to become the tepee.
       My students have worked in the tepee every year during the unit on Native Americans.

Book Worms and Library Books

        Last year my students made bookmarks to give to new students coming to St. Michael School.
I had scrap felt left over from making puppets.  We decided to make bookworms.  The kids cut wiggly worms and glued on googly eyes.

 

       I tried to organize my classroom library to help my students find books.  Then they can return the books to the correct shelf for the next person who wants to read that book. 

          The children can check out any book.  They use the binder for this.

5th Grade Weavers

     As part of learning about the Pueblo Indians of the desert Southwest, we learned that these native people wove cloth on looms.  This was our inspiration!  I have an old Fisher Price loom that I found at a garage sale years ago.  I have students take turns on this loom. 

    Some of my students brought in to school a lid from a shoe box.  This was the basis for our loom.  I cut slits in the two ends of the lid with a mat knife.  Then the students
strung the warp strings of yarn.

     Each student chose a color yarn to weave with.  The weaving took off!    

    Lunch recess can be very educational and  creative!

Interactive Notebook - Plains Indians

        To continue the unit of study on the Native American Indians we added to our interactive notebook pages.  I found an illustration of the inside of a buffalo hide tepee.  We used this as the base page for the Plains Indians.

      The students highlighted the information that is written around the outside of the tepee and drew a
highlighted line to the specific piece that could be found inside the tepee.

  The outside of the tepee was cut and glued as a flap onto the base page. Some students choose to color the outside of the tepee.

    We do have a tepee in our classroom.  Two students can sit and work in the tepee at a time.

      This section was added to our Climate Regions page in our notebooks. My students are really getting into drawing as part of  Social Studies class.  My hope is to use many different strategies to engage  many different  learners.

IOWA Tests

     This week our students worked on IOWA tests.  We mixed in many brain breaks from, the Learning Station,  Gonoodle, and You tube videos.   On Friday we ended the week with a movie for each class.  My kids watched "The Muppet Movie".  They even sang along with many of the show tunes. I can always count on Kermit to save the day or week.

       Along with the IOWA tests, the Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Detroit give a test on Catholic Beliefs and Traditions.  After all these tests, they earned some down time.
       We will get back to our regular schedule on Monday with homework and everything back to normal.

POWTOONS

     I found an interesting website, powtoon.com.   The website makes enhanced powerpoint presentations and videos.  It is very user friendly and free.  You can  naturally upgrade to
obtain more graphics, transitions, etc. for your presentations. Many premade presentations
that can be edited easily.
    We were working on an exploration unit.  As a evaluation of the studens' knowledge I had groups of students make a PowToon presentation.  The kids were very pleased with their efforts.

     This is the final image of a short video that I put together. Sorry it is blurry, but I snapped the picture of my computer screen.   If I can do this, anybody can!

Have you used Powtoons?

Leave me a note. I'd love to hear your ideas.