Utah and Canada…check your email!  A Monster is coming to a computer near you!

This week we are participating in the Monster Exchange!  We have partner classes in Victoria, Canada and Utah that we will be sharing our monsters with.  Students draw a picture, write a very good description, and then we will trade descriptions with the class through the online Monster Gallery at www.monsterexchange.org.  Check out this sample of a monster exchange that has already been completed!

In the end, we will see just how closely our partner class drawings match our original drawing!

I can’t display any of our fabuluous creations because our partner classes might be peaking!

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On November 3 and 4, GATE students hosted mock elections in their buildings.  GATE 5 and 6 hosted a mock election November 3.  GATE 4 held a mock election at the Elementary on Tuesday, November 4.  You can check out a slideshow of the elementary mock election made by our Principal and official election reporter, Mrs. Kocurek on the elementary website.

Throughout the day, we graphed the data of the incoming votes! It was a close race in both buildings.

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What do you get when you combine uncooked spaghetti, marshmallows, eggs, and teamwork?  Why,  a lesson in architectural design, of course!   Fifth grade GATE students are currently working on a skyscraper unit and tested their skills at building a spaghetti skyscraper that was required to hold and egg more than 40 cm off of the table.  We completed the webquest at this site!  It was a lot of fun and students learned a great deal about the strength of their structures. 

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In GATE 4, we checked out the book by Shel Silverstein called, Don’t Bump the Glump!    After reading, we created our own watercolor paintings and then wrote a poem with adjectives to match the creatures.  Word choice is everything in these poems! 

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• Bubble Wrap: $1.00 per sheet
• Clear Tape: $1.79 per roll.
• The cost of causing students to be creative and invent something new out of something old: Priceless.

The Bubble Wrap explosion in our classroom.

Tennis Anyone?

Bubble Book Cover

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In each of the GATE classes, students have been putting their best problem solving skills to work in the online game “Fanstastic Contraption.”  With all of this talk about the Invention Convention, we’ve been talking about inventions involving simple machines.  In this game, students have to work to build a virtual contraption that will move the red square into the target zone.   This game taught us that there are many different ways to solve  a problem, that sometimes one simple piece of the puzzle stands between you and a great discovery, and that challenges are fun!

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This week in GATE6, students fired up their teamwork skills for a very important event.  By working together, they were able to SAVE FRED!  Fred, the adorable gummy worm, ends up trapped on top of the SS Plastic Cup, a ship that has capsized.   Unfortunately, Fred can’t swim and his beloved life preserver is stuck under the boat.   Using only specialized rescue gear, known in the scientific world as “paperus clipicus,”  students had to team up and save Fred.

NOTE:  No Gummy Worms Were Harmed in This Activity.  (However, a few were later eaten.)

If you’d like to SAVE FRED in your classroom, here’s a link to a word doc that I found using Google.

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Have you ever done something and it turned out to be WAY more complicated than you originally intended?  This week in GATE, we did just that!    Rube Goldberg was a famous cartoonist whose wacky inventions took a simple task and made it very complicated with the use of simple machines.  Each student drew their own Rube Goldberg design.  Above is one of his designs for sharpening a pencil!  Do you really need a kite and a iron to sharpen a pencil?  Well, you do if you’re designing the Rube Goldberg way!   We had students design everything from how to cook an egg to how to blow out a birthday candle.  And you thought those tasks were simple!

We also tried out Fantastic Contraption and WhizzBall to try our hand at designing a contraption that really works.  So our invention unit is well underway and we are looking forward to our big Invention Convention coming up in December! 

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No, it’s not Achooo…. it’s Achi.  This week in GATE we are playing a few versions of a popular game.  We played the West African Verson, Achi.   Next, we played the English version, Three Man Morris.   We are working now to invent our own themed version of this strategic game.  We held a discussion about the meaning of the word fair and how to keep a game fair for all players. Students are creating rules, desiging a game board, and when we finish we will upload our games to a gallery here on our website so people around the world can try our versions out! So, stay tuned!  Students used Microsoft Pain, Microsoft Publisher, and some drew their boards by hand.  After we proofread our rules and put on the finishing touches, we will be completing our game gallery!   At least we now know one thing for sure…. when somebody says “Achi,” there’s no need to say “Bless You!” It just means they just won the game!

Here’s a blank version of the gameboard in case you’d like to make your own version of Achi!

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Our Parsley plant, donated by our school counselor, Mrs. Payne, was home to five caterpillars!  Since then, they have formed chrysalis and we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our butterflies!   Two of them escaped and attached to the wall of our classroom!  These must be the adventurous little caterpillars!  Hopefully we’ll be at school and in the classroom when they butterflies emerge!  It will be exciting for us all!  The fourth grade GATE students have been spending some time planning a butterfly habitat and thinking about how we could raised butterflies inside our classroom.  We will be gathering information and preparing a proposal for our school’s outdoor classroom committee to see if we can build a butterfly garden.   If you can’t wait for the butterflies to emerge… check out this site about Black Swallowtail Butterflies to get a preview of what they might look like.  Or, if you are interested in raising caterpillars at home or in your classroom, check out Butterfly School.   Stay tuned… we’ll try to post a picture when we get to see our own butterflies!

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