This is my first blog reflection of my Rube Goldberg machine project in Ms. Edwards’ fifth grade class. I will make five more blog reflections between now and April 19, when the project is due. We are just beginning the project. My partner Vrinda Pareek and I have been making sketches about what our machine should be like. If you don’t know, a Rube Goldberg machine is a chain reaction of objects that performers a simple task like blowing a bubble or flipping a paper. Not just yet will we tell you our idea, but stay tuned for more blog reflections. Here is a quick teaser of some of the objects that will be used: Toy cars and trucks, marbles and Domino’s. Of course there will be more objects used, but those are a few. Keep updated on more news by visiting my blog again soon!
Monthly Archives: March 2016
Argument Debates
I really enjoyed the argument debates that we did this year is Ms. Edwards class. My group had the important argument, should we further explore more underwater or outer space? I liked doing research and finding evidence to prove my point. Some groups had all the children wanting to fight for the same point, and some had to argue against what they really believed in, which must have been very hard. I didn’t care too much about what side I was being put on, but all the other kids in my group wanted outer space, so I fought for underwater exploration. I enjoyed watching videos and reading articles related to the topic. I felt that this was a good argument because it was not a “Yes” or “No” question. We had to introduce ourselves and what we supported, counter the points of the other side, state reasons and evidence to support our argument, and at the end sum up all the reasons we made for our argument. We got feedback after each debate. The first didn’t go so well. We didn’t use much teamwork. But by the second debate we worked well as a team, and showed all the major things we should during a debate. We added in more evidence, and made some posters to point to. After the first debate, we decided to start over with almost all new reasons. We chose the reasons based on articles we read to see what we could get the most evidence for. We all put in much more time and effort and it really paid off. This unit has really showed me how far you can go with friendly arguing. I never knew arguing could be so fun! I have really enjoyed this unit and I hope I get the chance to do it again soon.
2015: Top 3 Singer Comebacks
Today in class we read a Time for Kids magazine and it stated a lot of things that are happening in 2015 that people will definitely remember. I thought about how so many singers had huge comebacks in 2015. Below is a list of 3 big music comebacks in 2015.
Video Chatting With NASA!
Today at Heathcote we had a video chat with a woman named Rachel Powers that works at NASA. She was at the Kennedy Space Center. She said that there was a rocket launching tonight at the Kennedy Space Center! We got to ask questions that we thought of. My questions were:
- What planets have humans been too?
- What planets are NASA planing to explore next, if any?
Those were my questions, but sadly I couldn’t ask them because we ran out of time. I hope we can do it again. We waited forty-five minutes while they got the system working. It was fine though. The time passed by quickly. We appreciate that not a lot of schools get to do this but we got to! It was a very fun activity.
Rocketry Presentation Reflection
Today was our Rocketry Presentation! We showed our group presentation that we made on Google Slides to our parents who could come and all the students in our class. The presentation was about our last science unit, rocketry. We had three launches with one rocket per launch. We worked on our presentation for three months, and finally we presented it today! It was a great experience. We did it in our school computer lab, and the presentation was on a Apple Laptop and we connected it to the Smart Board.
Writing: Non-Fiction Feature Articles
In Mrs. Edwards fifth grade class we are writing non-fiction articles. We got to choose a topic, and I chose hamsters. We took out books about the topic we chose in our school library, and then wrote about the topic in our writing notebooks for a few weeks. Then we typed it up onto Google Drive. From there we converted it into Word. We are using Word at the moment. Then we will upload them online for the world to see. I loved writing about hamsters because I have a young hamster myself. Her name is Justice and she is about 10 months old. I love writing and I love hamsters so this was such a fun activity for me. I wrote about food, water, cleaning the cage, holding a hamster, grooming, and more. If you are interested in hamsters, or want to get one, then be sure to look out for the article!
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