Chick-Fil-A Ice Dream

Our class won an Ice Dream party from Chick-Fil-A because we had to highest participation in Spirit Night last Tuesday night.  The kids always LOVE having this treat :)

In years past a PTA mom has always gone to Chick-Fil-A, picked up our ice dream, and delivered it to our classroom.  This year, Chick Fil A's Marketing Director, Miss Amanda Butts, delivered our ice dream to us personally.  Not only did she bring us ice dream, but she brought each student a Chick-Fil-A cow, balloons to decorate our room, AND toppings for their ice dream.  She even spent about 15 minutes answering the kids' questions and talking with them.  What a great representative for our Decatur CFA!

'

 The yummy toppings:  sprinkles, cherries, and oreos

 Our class with Miss Amanda and their cows.

Essays

We have begun writing our first 5-paragraph essay of this school year.  We are writing about our favorite holiday.

Each student began by making a story-web.

 They then started working on their 3 body paragraphs.

We will work on our rough drafts, then peer-edit & teacher conference, and finally publish.  I can't wait to see how great these turn out.

TECHNOLOGY!!!!

After almost 4 LOONNG months without it, our projector was finally replaced Tuesday morning.  We were all SOOO excited.  Now we can use our ELMO and MOBI again.  Welcome back to the 21st Century, Mrs. Upton's class.

A special thanks to a few proactive parents that were very helpful in getting this item replaced :)

Student of the Week

Pen Pals

Throughout the year I have received several letters from students.  Each time I receive a letter I can't help but notice that my students do not know how to correctly write a letter.  E-mail is such a wonderful thing, but we have lost some basic fundamentals because of it.

To help us learn how to correctly write a letter, and to help us become better writers, we have decided to become pen pals with Mrs. O'Hara's class at Ben Davis.  The younger kids will love receiving letters form the big kids, and I know the big kids will look forward to their letters just as much as the younger one.  

Student of the Week

French Explorers

Our current IB planner focuses on explorations.  We have learned about Spanish explorers, and we are now learning about French explorers.  To study French explorers the students broke up into small groups and taught one another.

Student of the Week

Inferring with Frankenstein

We've been learning about making inferences when we read.  To practice inferring we created Frankensteins.  We inferred, or made educated guesses, about Frankenstein's favorite holiday, color, movie, and book.  Even though we do not know the exact answer to these questions, we can still draw conclusions about what the answer may be based on what we know about Frankenstein.

Student of the Week

Sheff Cup Part 2, :(

Wednesday afternoon we played Mrs. White's class in the Sheff Cup Finals.  Our class put up a good fight and played hard, but we fell short with a score of 3-2 in favor of Mrs. White's class.  

STAR Tests

Wednesday we went to the computer lab and took a STAR test to see if our reading levels had changed over the past 2 months.  Over 75% of our class has had growth in their level.  WOO HOO!!

LSM in the AM

This is a link to watch our school's morning show, LSM in the AM.  We do not have any students from our class that participate in the production of the show, but it is still very neat to watch and know that it is a student produced program.
Fifth grade students are responsible for LSM in the AM.   Tryouts are held in the spring so your child will have the opportunity to try out for next year's crew in the spring.

LSM in the AM

Sheff Cup Part 1

Sheff Cup began Monday and we received the bye :)  We played Mrs. Corson's class.

The girls played hard and scored a goal!!

 The boys played hard and scored a goal!!

 We won 2 - 0 and will play in the championship game against Mrs. White's class on Wednesday :)

Explorers

Moon Phases with Oreos

Today we learned about the phases of the moon.  We used Oreos to illustrate the waxing and waning phases of the moon.  We learned that waxing means that the moon is getting larger, and waning means that the moon is getting smaller.  We also learned that the moon really doesn't glow, it's just the suns reflection that makes it bright!

 As the students scraped the icing from each cookie to form the correct moon phase, they were told they could eat the icing they scraped off.  Some students chose to make an icing ball so they could eat it all at the very end.

 After we finished illustrating the phases of the moon the students were allowed to enjoy their Oreos.  I overheard some saying, "Science tastes good!"

Student of the Week

Cultue Projects

Last week we culminated our first IB unit of study that focused on cultures of the world.  Each student presented a project about a culture and brought in something from that culture to share with us.

We had a ton of food!!  We enjoyed ice cream, spaghetti, pizza, inside-out pancakes, queso, jelly rolls, honey flatbread, potato candy, scalloped potatoes, and much, much more.  

 Alex dressed as someone from the Mayan culture.

 Ethan constructed a piece of Mayan architecture.

 Aliyah dressed as someone from India.

 Smith dressed as someone from Ghana.

 Kate dressed as a soccer player because soccer is an important part of the culture in Ghana.

Sock Day

Look at all of these crazy socks!

Birmingham Museum of Art

Today we took a field trip to The Birmingham Museum of Art.  This trip provided the students with a wonderful learning experience that went along wonderfully with our prehistoric indian and culture units.  The students followed the Moccasin Trail in the museum and saw a lot of Indian artifacts.  Once we completed our Native American tour we then took a self-guided tour and saw pieces from Africa, India, China, Japan, and Korea.  Ask your child about something he/she learned.
We were not allowed to have cameras inside the museum, so I had to snap a few pictures during lunch.