Over the past few weeks they have visited my classroom and have proved to be a great help. One especially trying day Ms. Steele sent several of her students down to work with my students. As it turned out, on that particular day the computer lab was shut down about the time that my class would have gone. I was able to take the 5th grade helpers and pair them with my students. The 5th grade helpers read to them and/or assisted them on the computers. My students have been on the computers enough to log in on their own, but they still need help when a program freezes or unexpectedly shuts down. It must be a hiccup in Java or some other wonder of the technology age. Thanks go out to Jonathan the assistant, Lorenzo, Mary Alice, Karina, Kathya, Raquel, Orabelle, and the others who came to help me out on that day.
On Monday, May4 our class went on a field trip to the zoo. Ms. Steele said if she had known that we were going on that day she could have tried to get their trip to the zoo on the same day. The kindergarten would have really enjoyed going with the 5th grade. They really like it when the bigger kids come down to work with them.
On Friday, some of the 5th graders came to my class to help out again. They assembled some more readers for the class to use. Later they helped out in math. We were doing a data collection activity where we counted the number of times a student could hop on one leg. Mary Alice was especially helpful during this activity. By the way, Mary Alice jumped 350 times on one leg. Kathya recorded Mary Alice as she "smoked" Karina who jumped 288 times.
Later, Mary Alice, Karina, and Kathya helped my students with centers and handwriting before they called it a day and headed back to their class.
On Tuesday of last week Ms. Steele invited me to watch her class as they made their baking soda and vinegar "volcanoes". I went outside with them during my lunch time and they were having a great time. Unfortunately, they were having technical difficulties and the "volcanoes" did not work. They postponed them until Wednesday or Thursday. On the day that they did the "volcanoes" again they worked great. They also inflated some balloons using the trued and true vinegar and baking soda method. Afterwards, we went to my classroom and I did the famous "Instant Snow" experiment. Instant Snow is really sodium polyacrylate, a polymer used for various purposes from diapers to magic tricks. Mary Alice and Jonathon especially like the "snow".
Next week I plan on I plan on letting 5th grade add some hooks to some molecules and see what happens. Maybe we can make some polymer of some sort.
© 2009 Barry T Horst
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