Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Snowflake Webquest

Find the answers to the following questions about snowflakes using the embedded links.

What is a snowflake?
1. What is the difference between a snowflake and a snow crystal?
2. How do snowflakes form?

The Simplest Snowflakes
3. What shape are the simplest snowflakes? Why?

Snowflake Fun Facts
4. What are the smallest snowflakes called? How large are they?
5. How many snowflakes fall per each second?
6. What places on Earth see the least amount of snow?

7. Watch the videos on this page to see snow being "grown" in a laboratory.

8. Name, sketch, and describe 6 different snowflake types.
9. Why is snow white?

Physical Fitness Testing


 The California Department of Education provides videos to show the tests 5th grade students will be taking in March 2017.

Flexibility Test:  Shoulder Stretch 

Abdominal Strength/Endurance Test: Curl-Up

 Trunk Extensor Strength/Endurance Test: Trunk Lift

Upper Body Strength/Endurance Test:  Push Up

 Aerobic Capacity Tests:   PACER  or One Mile Run

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Hatchet Activities - Cessna Skyhawk, Canadian Wilderness, and About Gary Paulsen

Cessna Skyhawk
Brian flies to meet his dad in a Cessna Skyhawk airplane. We see planes flying over school all the time but they're usually very large ones. This plane is quite small.

Google "Cessna Skyhawk" and then click on Images to see pictures of the plane. Pick one of the images and use it as a model to draw a sketch of the plane on your activity sheet.

Instrument Panel

Brian has to fly the plane himself after the pilot becomes ill. Look at the instrument panel below and think about what you would do if you had to fly this plane by yourself.

On your Activity Sheet, draw an arrow to the instrument on the panel that you think would control whether the plane goes up or down.


 Canadian Wilderness - The Setting


  





About Gary Paulsen

 Born May 17, 1939, Gary Paulsen is one of America’s most popular writers for young people. Although he was never a dedicated student, Paulsen developed a passion for reading at an early age. After a librarian gave him a book to read—along with his own library card—he was hooked. He began spending hours alone in the basement of his apartment building, reading one book after another.

Running away from home at the age of 14 and traveling with a carnival, Paulsen acquired a taste for adventure. A youthful summer of rigorous chores on a farm; jobs as an engineer, construction worker, ranch hand, truck driver, and sailor; and two rounds of the 1,180-mile Alaskan dogsled race, the Iditarod; have provided ample material from which he creates his powerful stories.

Paulsen’s realization that he would become a writer came suddenly when he was working as a satellite technician for an aerospace firm in California. One night he walked off the job, never to return. He spent the next year in Hollywood as a magazine proofreader, working on his own writing every night. Then he left California and drove to northern Minnesota where he rented a cabin on a lake; by the end of the winter, he had completed his first novel.

Living in the remote Minnesota woods, Paulsen eventually turned to the sport of dogsled racing, and entered the 1983 Iditarod. In 1985, after running the Iditarod for the second time, he suffered an attack of angina and was forced to give up his dogs. “I started to focus on writing with the same energies and efforts that I was using with dogs. So we’re talking 18-, 19-, 20-hour days completely committed to work. Totally, viciously, obsessively committed to work, the way I’d run dogs. . . . I still work that way, completely, all the time. I just work. I don’t drink, I don’t fool around, I’m just this way. . . . The end result is there’s a lot of books out there.”

It is Paulsen’s overwhelming belief in young people that drives him to write. His intense desire to tap deeply into the human spirit and to encourage readers to observe and care about the world around them has brought him both enormous popularity with young people and critical acclaim from the children’s book community. Paulsen is a master storyteller who has written more than 175 books and some 200 articles and short stories for children and adults. He is one of the most important writers of young adult literature today, and three of his novels—Hatchet, Dogsong, and The Winter Room—are Newbery Honor Books. His books frequently appear on the best books lists of the American Library Association.

Paulsen has written a time-travel novel, The Transall Saga, which was named an ALA Quick Pick. And in the heartwrenching story Soldier’s Heart, Paulsen brings the Civil War to life battle by battle, as readers see the horror of combat and its devastating results through the eyes of 15-year-old Charley Goddard.

Paulsen and his wife Ruth Wright Paulsen, an artist who has illustrated several of his books, divide their time between a home in New Mexico and a boat in the Pacific














Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Native American Tribe Links

Use the following links to help with your research (the notes are due by December 5 and you must have a minimum of 3 sentences for each "topic").

Duwamish and here  (the Duwamish fall under a group called the Coast Salish)
Nez Perce and here
Chinook and here
Navajo and here
Cherokee and here
Wichita and here
Abenaki and here
Costanoan and here

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Chris Van Allsburg

Find out a little bit about Chris Van Allsburg's writing/drawing process and read a video biography!

Here are some of his books that you can listen to:  The Stranger, Jumanji, and The Widow's Broom.

Monday, October 24, 2016

50 States and Capitals

Click here and practice your state locations and capitals and here for region information.

Here is a cute game to practice the capitals and another here!

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Poppy by Avi: Links for Animal Report

Choose one of the animals below to research. Take notes and then create a  "Google docs" document with the information you discovered. See Mrs.Gray's example.


Deer Mouse
Deer Mouse video







Great Horned Owl 


Great Horned Owl video



Porcupine
Porcupine video