The Map Update

This week we are finishing up the West Region.  We've covered the intermountain states, California, and Washington so far.  We took a three day break to cover volcanoes, which was naturally super exciting for the munchkins.

We've been studying erosion, deposition, and weathering as well.  We're writing a guided expository essay, so it's nice that the subject areas are blending together.  

We had inclement weather last week due to rain, so we took advantage of the extra long morning to watch some Discovery Education videos on erosion and haboobs (giant dust storms that are typical in Arizona).

They loved it.  

It's so nice to see them get so excited about everything we're learning.

This week we're doing Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii.

I just wanted to thank everyone again who has sent in post cards.  My students love looking at them!

Our next region will be New England, to tie in with colonial history.

Tech Tip: Silence is Golden

We finished our FOSS kit last week and due to testing, I had two days after the assessment with my final science group.

(We departmentalized the science kits, so I taught the FOSS landforms kit to each of the four 5th grade classes.)

We tried a new strategy with our video streaming.  We watched "Thar She Blows", a short video clip from Discovery Ed on the eruption of Mt. Saint Helen's.  

The first time we watched, I had the students just watch for content.  The second time, they wrote down the crucial vocabulary words they heard.  After the second viewing, we made a list on the board:

The third time we watched, I turned off the sound.  Yes, we watched the video without sound.  The purpose was to allow the students to "be the expert" and narrate the video, using the vocabulary words.  They did a pretty good job with being the volcano expert.

I'll definitely be using this silence is golden trick again!

TPR volcanoes

We've been doing volcanoes and land forms during science (catch up here).  Today we reviewed the TPR hand motions that go with tectonic plate movement:

Subduction:

Divergence:

Fault lines:

My students had a lot of fun learning about tectonic plates and landforms :)

KWL charts

In science, we are doing a mini-unit on volcanoes.

One of my favorite strategies to activate students' background knowledge is with a K-W-L chart, like mine on volcanoes:

The K is for what students think they already know about the topic.

The W is for what students want to know about the topic.

The L is for what they learn about the topic (either in class or while researching).

We are going over the structure of volcanoes, classifying them and then going to one of my favorite free online tools, Discovery Kid's volcano builder!

Once inside, we get to review layers of the earth:

Tectonic plates and the ring of fire:

Go inside a volcano:

We go through the scientific method with the students, only changing one variable at a time.  For volcanoes, the variables are the viscosity and gas levels within the volcano.

Enjoy!

Land Forms

We've been studying land forms for a few weeks now in science.  We've learned all about different types of maps, made several different versions and observed how elevation can change a stream table.  

Next week, we are going to conduct more stream table experiments, this time with flash floods. (One time with no elevation, one time with elevation to see the difference).  From there, we'll discuss more vocabulary, look at Google Earth for land forms and learn about layers of the earth.  Then, after we co-construct our anchor charts, we'll learn about the ring of fire and tectonic plates.

I saw this idea on pinterest and I think it's a perfect Friday science activity:

I'm totally game for combining food and science, it's hands-on, edible learning at its finest!

Map-a-poluzza!

I might be the rare one here, but I love teaching geography, history, government and really anything to do with maps.  My grade level happily appointed that FOSS science kit to me (well, land forms) because for some weird reason, being a cartographer and making sand models only appeals to me and my inner five year old.

For fifth grade purposes, we go over physical, political and topographic maps.  We use post cards from around the world to examine different land forms, learn about the fifty states and regions of the US.  We use this map and the matching world version to go over political maps, focusing on state and international boundaries along with capital cities:

(Map is from FAO Schwartz, but the Discovery Channel makes a very similar one that is not only less expensive, but usually on sale at Kohls!)

We use our globe, atlases and old-school pull down maps to go over the physical features of the earth (land forms) and visit both using the different layers on Google Earth.

If you haven't played with the 3D buildings, I highly recommend it! We used it for looking at the monuments in Washington DC and for exploring the remains of the Titanic.  There are also premade tours on Google Earth, which you can access in the gallery or clicking the tour button under "my places"

The topographic maps are included in our FOSS science kit, but I extend the learning by printing out topographic maps of our area so the kids can make connections with our own mountains.  Mount Shasta, as nifty as it is, doesn't have the same connection as our own Mt. Charleston in Las Vegas. 

Besides exploring our surrounding neighborhood and US land forms, we also use Google Earth for virtual field trips.  A favorite is to visit the moon and Mars :)  

On the Google Tool Navigation Bar, select the planet and pull down to visit the moon, Mars or the sky.  The default setting is our own planet but you can go elsewhere.

Since I'm in charge of reviewing the solar system, it makes perfect sense for me to take my little astronauts on a virtual trip to Olympus Mons, Mars.  We talk about the name, make the connection to Mount Olympus (since they study Greek mythology in fourth grade) and they absolutely love it.  I often have to shoo them out of my room come recess time so I can eat.

When we talk about land forms, volcanoes inevitably come up.  While I'm not opposed to the traditional baking soda, red food coloring & vinegar "volcano explosion", that experiment is part of another science kit.  So instead, we visit the volcano builder website and play with virtual volcanoes.  

The students learn the vocabulary associated with volcanoes (viscosity, magma, etc) as well as the classification of types of volcanoes.  They make predictions about the types of explosions that will occur when the pressure and viscosity levels are changed.  We also watch volcanic eruptions and discuss the geological processes that are occurring   A tip I picked up from Discovery Education is to play the video clip on silent and have students narrate what is happening on the condition that they use the academic vocabulary.   We use Discovery Education and PBS video streaming, but teacher tube, you tube, National Geographic and other sites have similar footage.

To check their understanding of maps, I created a sort which is available on TpT.  Hopefully your students love earth science as much as mine :)  You've got to put the joy in teaching and if tech toys don't do it for you, find something that does.