Thoughts on a Friday....

I finished up the last of the Spring Conferences yesterday.  Thank you all for taking time to meet with me to discuss your child.  They have all shown such nice progress.  It was great to share that with each of you!  

There is always so much going on here it is hard to decide what to share.  But today was a very fun day.  We had dancing this morning.  This was the students' second day of dancing.  They worked on the merengue (mer-eng-gay) and also the hustle.  It was hysterical.  I stayed and participated and it was quite a work out.  I have to thank my dance partner, Mr. Stevens, for working patiently with me.

Partners got ready to dance!

Please check out the dancing videos on Twitter @ewatsonroom102

Also this afternoon we did a science experiment, which leads to introduce Ug and Grock! 

Meet Ug and Grock  

Ug and Grock are the two cavemen that need some help solving some problems.  Today, they had to decide on a way to get apples from the top of the tree.  Around them they found a rock and a large log.  

Students suggested catapulting the "smaller guy" high up into the air, but I told them that poor Grock was, in fact, afraid of heights. So he couldn't stand on Ug's shoulders either.  Wait!  After some discussion we saw that perhaps the two could made a "seesaw" and lift Ug.  But how?  They don't balance on the seesaw.  How can we make it work?  Ask your child! 

We did an experiment to investigate how to lift a larger load.  We used words like bar, fulcrum, load, and force as we explained our thinking.  We used gram counters to measure our findings. Then we talked about how the science word for the seesaw is actually, a "lever".  It is a SIMPLE MACHINE!  

Check out our groups! 

Should we move the fulcrum closer
to the load or the force?

Table 6 learned that precision matters!

Table 2 is thinking about their answer! 

Then students shared their learning 

and reasoning. 

They loved manipulating Ug and Grock on the lever!