More Science

We're back from vacation, so it's spring in fifth grade. I doubt it will happen in my class this year, because of the nature of the kids in the room, but other classes have couples. One even broke up right in front of me in the lunch room. All I can say is..."these are the days of our lives...."

In other news, my students are learning about the systems of the body. The kids do a simulation of medical school. We have them wear "lab coats," and many of them get very into their role. It is very important in upper elementary school grades to expose children to new vocabulary words. We explained how our these activities are "simulating" medical school. Thus, we can call these activities a simulation. They get the meaning, but some have a recall of or confuse this word with another similar word. Some kids walk around calling it the "stimulation."

Here's what one girl wrote in her class journal about starting the simulation:

"I'm excited to start the simulation. I'm in neurology. My group has Joe (funny), and Ellie is fun to be with. Nerves seem really fun to learn about too. I hope I learn about how you are nervous. I think it is great that we get to pretend to be doctors without going to jail. My mom said people who pretend to be doctors and don't go to medical school go to jail."

Mating and news travels fast

We are done with genetics in science and are now talking about animal adaptations. Today we were talking about how some animals have coloring for a particular purpose like camouflage. The whole point of this unit is to notice the purpose of certain attributes on organisms. Anyway, we were talking about how some animals have coloring that attracts a mate. One boy veers slightly off topic and shares a comment that sparks a little discussion. Here goes:

Boy raises hand and I call on him-

Boy: "I am very interested in mating. I think it's alright that they can attract their mate with their coloring, but I prefer the way crickets do it. The man use their feet or wings to make a noise. Then the woman cricket falls under the trance of his noise and can't resist him."
Me: You are right about them making a noise, but I'm not sure about the trance part.
Another boy: "Whales do it that way too, Ms. F"

I'm still waiting for some boy to make a noise and put me under a trance...hehe

I got the best present today! I got to go to a meeting at the middle school (the meeting wasn't the present..believe me). Seeing my former students was! I loved seeing how much they've grown and really just how well they're doing. There was one little girl that I was really hoping to see. I was so proud of her growth in my class, and I can't wait to see all that she's going to do. Just as I was about to leave, a seventh grade student came up to me and was like, "You can't leave." When I asked him why, he said "Michelle (a former student of mine) really wants to see me and would you please wait for her." She, however, was no where in sight. I asked him where she was, and she mentioned a different part of the campus. I was confused, because I really didn't know how she knew I was there (this was kind of a last minute meeting). So, I asked him. He said, "Ms. F, having you here is kind of news, so I texted it to my friends. We're allowed to use our phones after dismissal. News travels fast around here."

So cute!

Fertilization

We are further into our science unit on genetics. I am aware of how close many of these conversations get to sex, but I have to say this class really handles the conversations quite well. They had a review sheet to do covering many of the important ideas in the unit so far. A key concept of the unit is fertilization (when an offspring gets half of their genetic information from their father and the other half from their mother). On their review sheet, they had to define fertilization, and many of them did quite well. Here are some funny responses:

"when a sperm and an egg UNITE!" (yes, written in caps)

"the reproductive organs join and connect to produce an offspring" (haha- we never discussed the reproductive organs)

"when the sperm meets the egg and they decide to have a baby" (haha- we never talked about cells having a discussion either)