Powsner's Place

We finished and connected our ecocolumns.  There are mosquito fish, snails, algae, and chara in the aquariums; and crickets, isopods, rye, alfalfa, and mustard in the terrariums.  Who knew that two-liter bottles could become ecosytems teeming with life!  Okay, so some of the animals have already died.  And don’t even get me started on the fish with missing eyeballs – yuck!  Smile as you check out these great pictures!

Next week on Monday we will be heading to the Flynn for a performance of Jason and the Argonauts.  Please make sure your child is on time as always.  We have all permission slips back so the whole class will be going and we are excited!

We got a great start on our ecosystems this week and are eagerly awaiting the fish, snails, elodea, and duckweed to place in the aquarium.  Already the terrarium is bursting with life as the alfalfa is sprouting in most of them.  Soon the crickets will have food and shelter to survive when they get here.

We are reading historical fiction novels set during the Revolutionary War and exploring the theme of historical fiction.  Our new math unit, after our test this past week, is on coordinates, area, volume, and capacity.

I have been stamping planners with their homework written in and looking for parent signatures.  Thank you for all the support you have been giving your child.  The fun activity the night before the test backfired, however, as many students pointed out that I accidentally included division and it was just supposed to be multiplication.  Thanks for your understanding and notes regarding my mistake – it won’t happen again.  This week we’re doing reading logs, spelling homework, math follow-up, and planners.

Enjoy the sunshine this weekend!  Here’s hoping for an early spring that sticks!

Mrs. Sato

Hello, my name is Mrs. Sato and I will be teaching this class while Ms. Powsner recuperates from her surgery.  I taught in Japan and Alaska before I moved to Vermont with my family last summer.

This past week was a whirlwind, just three days long and we packed a lot of stuff in: introductions and personal narrative essays, Greek puppet presentations, beginning our Ecosystems unit in science, and fraction and mixed number multiplication.  Whew!

Next week it will be back to normal, we’ll have spelling homework in addition to math and reading.  I’ll send home the reading log for students to fill out daily, and I also stamp their planners and check for parent signatures each day.  We need lots of 2 liter bottles for our science unit, especially if they are clear and clean.  We will start with what we have but please send in any you can throughout the week.

It has been a tremendous pleasure to meet the awesome students of Ms. Powsner’s fifth grade class this year and I look forward to working hard with them and their parents for the duration of my time here at MBS!

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Mrs. Sato, satoe@csdvt.org

We have been studying Greek Mythology.  We have been reading about the gods and some of their adventures.  It is a lot of fun, because we have been working on many fun projects such as: Greek Scrolls, and were going to be making Puppets of the gods.

This week some of the kids in our class made Powerpoint presentations. Here are a few that we hope you’ll enjoy. Click here to view our Powerpoint.

Blog Submitted by: Ali Duffy & Ruby Tetrick

Powerpoints by: Van Nguyen & Michael Prevost

Today is a sad day…… do you know why? It’s a sad day because our friend Adell is moving!!! She is moving half way arouond the world to Saudi Arabia. We wish her the best of luck! Keep in touch Adell!

This week in Four Winds we learned about pinecones. We looked at different pinecones and observed that when the petals are closed it keeps the seeds in and the tree can’t reproduce. When the petals are open they let seeds go and the tree can reproduce. We had a lot of fun. We finished up the hour decorating our pinecones and here are some of the creations we made.

blog submitted by Ali

This week was Super Duper Amazing. This week in science, we learned about cells. We did an experiment with an egg, (aka the visible cell). This experiment was to test osmosis.  This is the experiment:

We put the egg in vinegar overnight.

Outcome using vinegar:  NO SHELL    It leaves the membrane showing

The next day we wanted to see what would happen if we added salt, food coloring or sugar.

Outcome using corn syrup:  WRINKLED MESS   Also slight color change

Outcome using salt water:  EGG APPEARED TO GET BIGGER AND STRONGER

     That is what happened.  It was fun and messy too!

blog written and posted by Jack and Anna

This week was great; we had our second Four Winds unit. We studied leaves. We learned the names of the different parts of the leaves like the stem, teeth, lobes, and veins. One cool fact is that in the summer the leaves have a lot of chlorophyll, which makes them green. But, as the days grow shorter and the weather gets colder chlorophyll is not able to run through the veins. That’s why leaves are brown, yellow, orange, or red in autumn. Also in Four Winds we did a leaf drawing where you stand back to back with a partner. One partner describes the leaf while the other one draws it. It was really fun!  When we finished our drawing activity we went outside for a leaf scavenger hunt. We searched for eight different kinds of leafs, and found just about all of them. Thank you to Mrs. Porter and Mrs. Moore for teaching us Four Winds!

Submitted by: Julia, Becca and Ali

 The week was great!  The big news flash was cells. We have been learning about them in science and they are very interesting.  We began the week making slides of onion cells. We put a thin piece of onion on a slide.  Since the onion is white and blends in with the light, we put two drops of red food coloring on the onion.  We covered it with another slide and placed it under the microscope.  What we saw was amazing.  They looked like little prison cells. Ironically, that’s how they got their name.  We also made a game up with our vocabulary words.  We made flashcards and had fun learning the definitions.  We love to say endoplasmic reticulum because it rolls off your tongue and makes you sound smart.  We had a great week in science.

Blog submitted by Olivia, Kelsey, Kaitlyn and Julia

Posted by Ali and Ruby

These are the pictures of our field trip to Indian Brook.  The trip was a lot of fun.  We hiked on a trail around the resevoir and than played some games.  Everyone had a good time.

blog sumitted by:  Kyle Mendes