URL for Famous Contributer to the American Revolution

We are starting on a new adventure in writing/speech this week.  The 5th graders are going to choose a person that made a significant contribution to the American Revolution.  They will start by exploring the following web site to determine who they will choose to explore and write about.

theamericanrevolution.org. 

Update...

Here is a list of a few more sites that kids might find helpful when writing their speeches. Please feel free to work on the speech at home, as well. 

Click on the portraits to learn more about your famous person: Mr. Nussbaum's list of Important People

Scroll down the page to find the section that says, "Biographies of People Important to the American Revolution": Kid Info about Famous People

This Liberty's Kids site has very short biographies about your famous people: Liberty's Kids Famous People

Look under the heading "People" to find short biographies: Ducksters American Revolution

Shorter and slightly easier to read biographies: HistoryCentral.com

Look at the long list of names on the left side of the page: Shmoop.com

A Little Bit of Washington County History

Last week we had the pleasure of welcoming the Washington County Mobile Museum to the fifth grade. Our presenter explained how Hillsboro, Beaverton, and the surrounding areas got the nickname of 'The Silicon Forest'. She also brought along some of the technology that has been developed in our area. Parents, you might recognize some of the old cell phones in the pictures. It really is amazing to think how far technology has come and how many of the developments have happened in our own backyards!

Examining the insides of a hard drive & making an important call!

Putting the phones in chronological order 

Taking a closer look at a circuit board

Next week we will have a presentation from the Hillsboro Police department on cyber safety. Please join us for the parent information night on Tuesday, at 6:00pm. We are hoping to increase our students' awareness of the most positive ways to use 21st century technologies. 

Finally, please be aware that we will continue to send home Writing Sparks, Reading Logs, Nightly Math Homework and Fox Reports through the first week of June. While we understand that students are excited for summer break, we still have a number of topics we want to finish covering before the end of the year. We are finishing our fraction unit (ask your students if they can add/subtract fractions with unlike denominators) and learning about early U.S. history. 

Have a wonderful week!

Fractions, Time, and the Clock

It is really neat as a teacher to see that application of math into the real world of students.  One of our math lessons last week connected the concepts of time and the clock to our study of fractions.  The students did a great job demonstrating their knowledge with story problems. It was really nice to use the clock to demonstrate fractions because it isn't just based on our number system of 10's and 100's.  Students really had to think to make the connections....

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What a great week of learning! We enjoyed a really fun visit from the Evergreen Aviation Center last Friday. We learned about how design affects rockets and then had fun testing our own rockets outside. We appreciate this engaging learning experience and our instructor for coming out to Free Orchards!

 

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Colonial Regions Posters

5th graders display and share what they have learned about the New England Colonial Region.

This group also did their research on the New England Region of the 13 original colonies.

The Southern Colonies were distinctly different from the Mid-Atlantic or the New England Colonies.

For the past 7 days all the 5th graders have been researching the three distinct regions of the 13 original colonies.  They were divided into groups of four students each and each student then researched a significant topic that shaped that region of the colonies.  These topics included the founding, geography, religion, slavery, plantations,  and economy.  The culmination of the project was a well designed poster  presented to their class.  Each student had the opportunity to share a summary of what they had learned.  The plan is to display the posters in the upstairs hallway so other grade levels can learn more about the colonial period as well.  We urge all to come take a look.