Week of November 19,2010

Reading:  Jane Yolen

  This week we have been learning about Jane Yolen. Ms.Smith made a poster and has been teaching us about her. She has written over 300 books!Some of her fantastic books are "Owl Moon," "Pirates in Petticoats," and "Dragon's Heart." Jane started writing when her and Steven, her younger brother started writing a newspaper for their apartment building. In high school she was the editor for the school newspaper.In 1962 she married David Stemple.They were married 44 year until he died of cancer in 2006.She has 6 grandkids.Jane Yolen still writes today.This year she is turning 72.Happy Reading!

Week of November 12, 2010

Health

         This week during health, we did some cool but gross things. One of the things that we did was look at the sugars and the fat in different sodas and foods. We divided the sugar by 4 to turn grams into teaspoons. We divided the fat by 5 to turn grams to teaspoons. We did that for the following drinks, Coke, Mountain Dew, orange soda, Gatorade, ginger ale and A and W Root Beer. The one with the most sugar was root beer with almost 19 teaspoons! The one with the least sugar was Gatorade and ginger ale with 8 1/2 teaspoons each. After we did that, we looked at fat. It was really cool and gross. She took Crisco cooking fat and showed us how much fat is in Burger King food. It was a lot! Then she told us that there is 1 teaspoon in each bag of chips and if you ate 5 bags of chips a week, that would be a lot of fat.  

Bullying 

   We had a bullying meeting. We learned that when we see someone bulled we say: "Stop we don't do that at Potter Road." We learned that it is illegal to bully in Massachusetts. We learned that if it is serious bullying, you  could be arrested. In 2009 Massachusetts enacted one of the strongest anti-bullying laws. If you are a bully, your teacher by  law would have to tell the principal. The principal by law would have to tell the police. There are 3 types of bullying : physical, emotional, and cyber bullying

Social Studies

      This week in Social Studies we learned about Henry Hudson, Jacques Cartier, and Samuel de Champlain. For Henry Hudson his crew got so mad at him they threw him over board.This is called mutiny.  France funded Jacques Cartier. And Samuel de Champlain found Quebec. We also looked at letters from the Pilgrims and the Wamponoags.

Week of November 5, 2010

  In reading this week we are doing some thing called epals.The people we are doing it with live in Moscow,  Russia.The cool thing is that they are also in 5th grade, too.Our classroom and their classroom sent over pictures to each other.In their pictures they all wore the same thing.In some of the pictures you can really tell what they were doing. In some of the pictures they were doing plays.Even though it does not seem we have a lot in common, WE DO!!!!! We are doing this as we learn about people from other cultures.

   In art this week we did paintings on canvas or paper.You would do the painting based on your  poem.Most people would do all these different shapes and designs.At the end they were very colorful and great.I think everyone had a great time!        

  In Social Studies we learned that Francisco Pizarro was a conquistador.Pizarro was born in Spain in 1478 and died in 1541. Pizarro was invited to a feast, but then ambushed the Inca.  Pizarro killed thousands of the Inca and strangled their leader, Atahuallpa.  This, along with disease that his men brought, ended the Incan empire.  Pizarro wanted to take riches in Lima, Peru.  Later, he was killed by Pedro de Almagro while trying to take the riches.  Almogre wanted the riches for himself.

Written by Will, Evan and Dimitry