Park Specialists' Newsletter
Fifth Grade Edition - Second Trimester
Second Trimester Recap
From Park's Art Instructor - Mrs. Ovadje
Half of the 5th grade at Park Elementary switched from ART to STEM specialist in January, and vise-versa. In art, we explore many materials and students work hands-on with a variety of materials including markers, crayons, watercolor paint, tempera paint, collage, chalk pastels, oil pastels, printmaking, paint sticks and clay. While making art, we also explore line, shape, color, texture, value, form, and space.
Projects we have completed:
Modern Mona Lisa, a spoof of the famous painting by Da Vinci
Clay Leaves - going in the kiln over spring break! (pictured Below)
Next up:
One-Point Perspective City Drawings
Jackson Pollock Action Paintings
Pop Art Candy Prints using styrofoam printing plates and block printing ink
Sunflower Still-Lifes using only tints and shades of yellow
Students are keeping their artwork in their portfolio as a collection. Students will bring home their portfolios at the end of January.
I will be keeping some fabulous art pieces for the art show in the spring. Also, look for more information from your classroom teacher regarding Arts & Academics! Thank you PTO for making it happen every year!
The ART room is looking for donations:
Glue sticks
Clear/wide book tape (3M)
Thank you for your consideration, Mrs. Ovadje
Hockey Lisa, Rapper Lisa, Bunny Lisa, Casual Lisa, Kitty Lisa, Wonder Woman Lisa
From Park's Librarian - Ms. Shadis
Web Evaluation
Did you know that not everything on the world wide web is true? Students worked together to compare trustworthy and false websites and practiced critical evaluation skills. Please discuss with your child how they view media and promote critical evaluation of the thousands of message influencing students every day. To share their learning, students have been using their google drive accounts.
New Books!
The library’s new books were celebrated in class. Students heard book talks about select titles of interest to 5th grade (see sample of high interest series below) and walked around to preview even more choices. Check out the list of new books online: destiny.isd423.org. Click on “Resource Lists” Select “2019 New Books”
Book Coopertition
Fifth grade students wrote 433 book responses for the Book Coopertition contest. In many classrooms, there were special Drop Everything and Read times as well opportunities to recommend books to classmates. Many students have and will receive a prize book rewarding their efforts.
Book Madness
February 5-March 6, students voted in class for the Book Madness tournament. The library has multiple copies of each book pictured below. Check one out and enjoy together!
Looking ahead…
April 12: Buy One Get One FREE book fair in the library in conjunction with Arts & Academics
April 30-May 28: PTO’s Reading Tree. When students read 3 hours outside school, they earn a free prize book.
From Park's Technology Integration Instructor - Mr. Durheim
The second trimester of TechTime was filled with fun, challenges, and learning for fifth graders. We focused on these main topics:
Media Literacy - Advertising is all around us. Students explored many of the gimmicks advertisers use to get our attention and persuade us by playing a fun game called “Admongo.”
Computational Thinking, Coding, & Robotics - Fifth graders have continued to be challenged to use their computational thinking (problem solving) skills.
Students were introduced to Ozobots--small robots which use light sensors to follow color coded lines. They used the robots to follow code and created their own coded maps. Thank you to the ISD423 Foundation for providing a grant to purchase these little robots that help us to do BIG THINKING!
Students also participated in the Hour of Code and are currently exploring four different types of coding as we rotate through coding stations.Online Safety - We focus on online safety throughout the whole year. We will continue to learn about responsible sharing as students learn more about coding and sharing their creations .
UP NEXT: During the third trimester, fifth graders will continue learn about different types of coding through our coding station rotations and we will spend several Library and TechTime classes learning to code in Scratch.
Please visit the TechTime website to learn more about specific activities, websites, and learning goals.
Type to Learn Keyboarding - A New Specialist Class Offering!
Students continue to have keyboarding lesson time once every four school days. We use an online program called Type to Learn which tracks individual student progress and sets individualized goals. Learning to type on a keyboard is very similar to learning to play a musical instrument. It takes a lot of hard work, practice, and determination. Students are finding that a positive attitude and focus are very helpful in making progress.
From Park's Phy Ed Educators - Mrs. Hahn & Ms. Mueller
A typical day in the Physical Education class begins with a fitness warm-up activity. These activities vary from cardiovascular, muscular strength/endurance, and/or flexibility. The purpose of these activities is to increase the students’ awareness and level of fitness. After the warm-up, students have a lesson that focuses on the skills that will help them to be successful in the games in a unit. Then, students participate in an age-appropriate game using the skill(s) practiced in that lesson.
Walk for Hunger Recap:
In December, our students participated in the “Walk for Hunger Food Shelf Drive”. This event combined wellness and community service for our students. We donated 1,393 pounds of food to the McLeod County Food Shelf! Thanks to all the families that donated and helped make this event a success!
Units covered during second trimester:
1. Basketball
2. Cooperatives- large and small group activities (see below for a short video of some small group exercises practiced during P.E.)
3. Multicultural games
4. Jumping activities- ropes and Chinese jump ropes
5. Table tennis
6. Components of fitness- Fitness Wheel and identification activities of components.
Simple steps for making a real difference in children’s lives and helping build healthy habits for life:
- Keep fresh fruit in a bowl within your child’s reach to grab as a quick snack.
- Take a walk with your family after dinner.
- Drinking just one can of soda a day increases a child's risk of obesity by 60%. Restrict your child's soft drink consumption.
- Turn off the TV during meals and share some family time.
From Park's Music Teachers - Ms. Hauth & Mrs. Hoeft
We have continued our recorder work from last trimester and have added new notes and songs to our repertoire. The students’ playing abilities continue to improve. Some of the music we use in class has recorded accompaniments and it is fun to be able to play along as a group with these polished recordings. Recently, we have been working on earning our Recorder Karate belts. Students test on songs individually, with each song progressing in difficulty. There are 9 belt levels that can be mastered, ending with the Black Belt. Currently, most students are working on the Purple and Blue belts. New notes worked on this trimester were low D, high D and F#.
During November we worked on two Native American songs. We reviewed Land of the Silver Birch from fourth grade, then added drums and xylophones to it to create a booming and powerful sound. Another song we practiced was Sioux Lullaby. Students created their own dance movements in small groups and played recorder and drums along with it as each group performed for the class. In December, students practiced Jingle Bells on recorder and the French carol Pat-a-pan. This song features drums and recorder, but students added the bass bars and xylophones too. Other recorder songs we have worked on during January include the round Who Has Seen the Wind and Winter Song.
Besides Pat-a-pan from France and Native American songs, other multi-cultural connections made this trimester included the Hora dance from Israel (a review from 4th grade). Students especially enjoyed playing the African drums and percussion instruments in a drumming circle, first echoing patterns then creating their own patterns. A call and response format alternating between a soloist and the whole group encourages students to listen to each other in order to play back the rhythm correctly. Students were thrilled when we combined more than one pattern together to create layered rhythms. See pictures below of students from Mrs. Elton’s class playing in the drum circle.
Students enjoy improvising and composing their own songs in music class. A big project that the students are currently working on is to create their own melody on the Orff instruments using “rocky mountain rhythms” to go along with the folk song Rocky Mountain, then write down their melody on staff paper. After practicing their melody, students will perform for the class.
Fifth graders have learned and practiced songs using all of the notes in the diatonic scale Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do as well as low and high octave notes. In addition, students are learning about major and minor modes, flat and sharp signs, and also jazz and blues notes. They will be well prepared for any music group they choose to join in the future.
The Band and Choir participants performed for the school this trimester. We have many talented musicians in fifth grade!
From Park's Science Specialist - Mrs. McDowell
Throughout all of the STEM projects students are continually following the Engineering Design Process to ask questions, plan, create, make observations and improve their designs along the way. Check out what your child/student has been up to these last couple of months in STEM!
Bungee Jumping! To finish up their time in STEM, 5th graders were met with yet one last “thrill-ride” challenge that involved a lot of data recording and math! They were to figure out how many rubber bands a bungee jumper would need, when jumping from a height of 225 cm, to get the closest to the floor without actually hitting it. The rubber bands represented the
bungee line of course, and the jumper…you guessed it; a doll. After doing several test “jumps”
with different numbers of rubber bands, students recorded their data on a table and graph.
They were only allowed to test up to 8 rubber bands, which brought in an extra challenge as
the 8 rubber bands only got the doll to fall around 120 cm. After analyzing their data and
graphs, all teams had to come up with a final educated guess as to how many rubber bands
they thought it was going to take. The highlight of this challenge was getting to test all of their guesses to see which teams were correct.
After the “final jump” a discussion was held regarding the challenges and restraints students encountered during the activity, along with talking about the potential variables that may have skewed their data and how that could be fixed for the future.
A “new” STEM year began on January 22nd for the classes of Mrs. Kaminsky, Mr. Tillmann, Mr.Langins and Mrs. Madson. Up until this point, they had been seeing Mrs. Ovadje for Art. It
was a bittersweet change as many of the students were going to miss Art, but were also
anxiously awaiting their very 1st STEM challenge of the school year!
Crow Tools! In mid-January, the new 5th Grade STEM students learned that crows are very
clever animals. They are capable of taking objects from their surroundings to create tools that help them retrieve food from hard to reach places. Crows use their external structures (like their beak and claws) to help them achieve this task. To relate, 5th graders were asked to
design and create a tool-like structure that could retrieve 3 Cheerio pieces from out of the
bottom of a water bottle in the fastest amount time possible. While it may appear so…this
was no easy feat. Within their groups of 3 and 4, students were challenged with the ultimate
collaborative task and were only allowed to use 1 hand to create the tool; this is because a
crow has only 1 beak and our hands represented their beak. Many agreed that this part of the
mission was the most difficult.
Leading up to their tool making, each student worked with a partner to research a different animal. They were asked to find 4 external/internal structures on that particular animal and report on how each structure helps the animal in their habitat. They found some very intriguing bits of information and created beautiful posters to showcase each animal! Most classes found that a sturdy structure with a sticky base was the way to go.
Working together (using only 1 hand) to create their crow-like
tool
Park Elementary School
Email: dan.olberg@isd423.org
Website: isd423.org/park-elementary/
Location: 100 Glen Street Southwest, Hutchinson, MN, United States
Phone: (320) 587-2837
Twitter: @parkelem