Planetarium

The Planetarium was awesome. We watched the stars and the Constellations. It turns out that there is a dragon, big and little bear Constellation and a dog Constellation! I even saw Mars! I also controlled a land rover on (fake) Mars! I can't wait to go back to the Planetarium! 

Today we went to the science center and planetarium. We saw: the maker space where we made cool experiments,a mars exhibit where we saw and programed an actual rover, the planetarium where we saw cool constellations on a slide show in a place similar to the imax, and a ton of other cool things.  

Planetarium Field Trip

Our trip to the planetarium was a lot of fun! First we explored the Makerspace in the Science Center part of the building. My reading partner and I made a wagon that actually rolled! It was a lot of fun! We also got to see the mission control room that controlled the rover on the other side of the building. It was cool to see and learn about the rovers and drones currently on Mars. Then we got to go see the Mars exibit in the planetarium. We could test different rocks and minerals to see what were in them, got to see landmarks on Mars, and even got to see a rover in action! We also saw a cool elevator designed to look simaler to the inside of a spaceship. Pretty soon, it was time for the star show. I walked up a long set of stairs into a large room simaler to the IMAX. I could see a faint image of stars all around us, but because it was before the show, I could only see about ten or eleven. I was worried that was what it was going to look like the entire show. I grabbed a mat and layed down next to my friends. The lights dimmed as the announcer showed us things like bathrooms and exits. After a while, she made a few more stars appear and started explaining what they were and how they connected. I was kind of sad that the stars were so dim. I started to tune out when something the announcer said caught my attention. She was talking about smog and light pollution, and how the stars we could see on the screen were dim because of that. I got exited. She then took away the light polution and the stars became a million times brighter! Then it got even better! She took away the smog and... Thousands of stars appeared out of nowhere! Some were large and bright while others were smaller and dim. It was so beautiful. I could see a long part of the Milky Way galaxy and I could even recognise some constilations. She explaned more, but I was just flabbergasted at the beauty of the stars. Overall, I loved the field trip and would be happy to go back any time.

Colony fates By Iris

Colony fates

By: Iris

In fifth grade we are doing a colonization unit in social studies. We are doing things called rounds where we pick a Weather fate, a Farming fate, a Hunting fate, and a Fishing fate, and a general welfare. The weather fate tells you if you have good or bad weather.The farming fate tells you how much food units you get and if you has problems. And the Hunting fate tells you how many food units you get or the problem. the Fishing tells you the exact same thing. And the general welfare is the overall card it is not very nice most of the time. It was only nice once or twice. But you really need luck.

The girl By: Iris

Her mouth was wide open and I could tell, she was shocked to see her. The girl standing across from her, she looked just like her. The shocked girl’s name was Delta. She had chocolate brown hair and emerald eyes. The girl across was the same the only difference was Delta had turquoise highlights. Then I realized something, the girl was Delta’s twin. That could be the only explanation. Then the mom came in. She was confused for 1 second, then her face flushed in understanding. “Roxy?” She asked. The girl replied grinning “Yes, it’s me and I’m back mom.”  

6th Grade Orientation

6th Grade Orientation

By Iris and Ava

On January 28th 2016, most of the 5th graders from the Clayton school district, went to Wydown Middle school, because there was a 6th grade orientation to get 5th graders ready to go to Middle School. At the beginning of the orientation when the parents and students walked in some people from Wydown passed out a sheet of paper telling which group you were in. When the orientation started the Middle school principal made an announcement, and greeting students when everybody was situated. She introduced some of the Wydown middle school teachers. After a little bit, three 6th grade kids, that talked about middle school. The first person was really humorous, and exaggerated a lot in an HILARIOUS sort of way. The second person was a girl named Sahi. She is one of my best friends (Ava’s) she sounded pretty good. The third person was a girl named Gabriella. She did pretty good too. After all of the announcements, we were dismissed to leave and go to our groups. Ava and I (Iris) were in the same group: Group D.

My friend Claudia and Seraphina were in the same group: Group A. There were some 8th graders leading the groups. We first went to math.

In math, we found out STARTLING news. We. Had. Homework. on. The. Weekends. Inside, Iris and I ‘s (Ava) heads we were screaming. As you could have probably seen, we do not like math that much, we like simple things in math, but still.

After the Math discussion, we went to Elective Choices and we got to choose which electives we were thinking about doing in middle school. Iris chose drama and music. I chose (Ava) art and music.

After Electives, we went to Social Studies, where they did an AMAZING skit about what we were going to do in that year of middle school. Ava and I (Iris) were literally laughing so hard that Ava got the hiccups.

After Social Studies, we went to Literacy. were they showed us a video, were 6th graders talked about fun things to do in Literacy. I could tell that Ava was excited to do this because she loves to read and write.

After Literacy, we went to Science, were we found out that we were going to go to a fun field trips. Where we get to try to find FOSSILS! We both thought that it was going to be cool and interesting.

After science, we went to Language Arts. There was an option between French and or Spanish. Iris is thinking about doing French, and I (Ava) am thinking about doing spanish, just because I already know how to talk in spanish, because all of the 1st grade students, through 5th grade students, learn the language.

After the tour of Wydown, everybody went home, Ava and I thought that it would be a little bit scary, but we also thought that it could be fun.

Discovery!

Discovery Blog Post

In 5th grade, we started a social studies unit called the Old Colonies or the 13 Colonies. But this isn’t any normal social studies unit, in this unit we are doing an educational stimulation called ‘Discovery’. In this simulation classmates are sorted into teams by teachers. Then the teams pick a colony name, draw a flag and complete assignments to earn points which are later converted to ‘wealth units’, which brings me to the next part.

There are two phases in this simulation. A sailing phase and a landing phase. During these phases, classmates load 3 ships with goods bought with the wealth units they earned. Once they are finished, they pick sailing fates and landing, hunting, fishing, farming, weather and general welfare cards and fates. Honestly last year 4th graders did a Oregon Trail stimulation and when they loaded their wagons, they had limited space but unlimited money. On the Discovery stimulation, the ships have infinity space but limited money. Oh well...