Tech-Taters

On Friday May 20, our class represented the ancient greek city-state Sparta in our 5th grade version of the Olympics.  We competed in a full day group of events.

The events were:

4×100 relay

4×200 relay

Shotput

Discus

Long Jump

800m run

80m sprint

400m walk

We came second in the olympics and everyone in the whole class did great and had lots of fun.  Here are some photo slideshows our awesome teacher made.

Here are our faces

Action shots!

See the water wheel working

In winter break I saw a water wheel in India.  It is called a persian wheel and works by oxen who pull a log.  The log is attached to a wheel, and the wheel is attached to another log.  The second log is attached to another wheel which picks up water from a well and dumps it in an irrigation canal which takes it to the fields.  This is a water wheel that works by pulleys and gears.  I thought it was interesting.  It is different than most water wheels because it is worked by oxen pulling it and not by the person operating the wheel.  It is  also environmentally friendly and doesn’t use any fuel or electricity.  I think it is sometimes difficult to understand because it has such a complex system of working.  It reminds me of a chain reaction, because when the one log turns, everything else moves and the end result is an irrigation system.  The log turns, which makes the wheel turn, which makes the second log and wheel work.  I think it is very interesting because it is unique.

On the 16th of November we took the subway to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  We were there to see the Scholar’s  Garden, the hanging scrolls, and objects from Chinese history.  The Scholars Garden is an indoor garden with a mini waterfall, and plants.  When we got there, we had to think of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs that we thought of when we sat in the garden.  We will use them for a writing project.  The Scholar’s Garden is a calm place, so a lot of the words were something like: water, clear, gently, moving. After the Scholar’s Garden we went to the hanging  scrolls.  A lot of them were brush paintings showing things from nature.  There were also poems written on top of, or on the side of the paintings.  The poems had something to do with the paintings, like if the picture was a lonely person in the trees at sunset, the poem would be something like: In the sunset, I am standing here lonely.  The people in the paintings (if there were people), were usually the poet themselves, so the poet would refer to them as ‘I’.  Some of the poems were very long.  Under the poems, usually there would be the signature chop/s.  Signature chops are little red stamps with your signature in them that you design.  Usually they are square but sometimes they are circular.  What we had to do was pick one poem and painting we liked.  Then we drew the painting, gave the information(title, artists, etc.), copied the poem, and wrote a paragraph about how it made us feel.

Then we went to a long room full of objects. Mainly there were 2,000 year old weapons, and things that showed what the ancient Chinese people did. Here are two examples: there was a short sword with its sheath, and a luido board and pieces. Luido was an ancient Chinese game. There were also clay statues of people arranged so that it looked like they were playing luido. The objects also reflected culture, and there was a whole room full of giant Chinese Buddha statues. The objects were almost never monochromatic, and the Chinese always painted them colorfully as if they were mini people or the real thing if they were life size. We each picked an object and drew it, making observational and subjective inferences. Then we went back to school at the end of the day.

On November 11th we had all our family come in so we could show them our work.  It was from 8:00 to 8:45.  We had little red commenting booklets at our seats so that after people looked at our work, they could write in what they thought.  People could go around (parents and students) and look at everyone’s work, and comment if they wanted to.

Some of the things we showed them were our timelines.  We made them by picking two life events from each year.  Then we wrote them into books and illustrated them.  We also showed them our blackberry books.  They are called blackberries because they are dark purple, the color of blackberries.  We use them like sketch books.  Sometimes we use them for art, and sometimes we get assignments from Ms. G.  Like once we got a funny shaped blue piece of paper that we had to turn into something.  The other thing we showed them were glogster.  Glogster is place where you can make online posters.  We made glogs about number theory terms and that’s what we showed them.

This year during our number theory unit in Maths, we each chose a maths word to make a definition of.  We did an online poster using glogster to create fun representations.  There were pictures, animations, videos, and much more.  We had words like: factors, multiples, Lowest Common Multiples, and exponents.  Some people used videos and text, other people just used text, but everyone made a fun, easy to understand definition.  We made the online posters on glogster.  Some advantages of making a poster online are that you can add video, sound, and animations.  But then if you wanted to print them, and a major part of yours was video and sound, those would be just pictures.  So would the animations.  Another disadvantage is that if you want text with nothing around it it’s hard to put in. If you want to see the glogs we made, this link will take you to a page where you can see them.

Minerva