A Good News and Bad News Sort of Day

May 26, 2010 eoin24 Comments 0 Comment

10,000 Visitors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, that’s right! We have made it to 10,000 visitors!!! Over the past year we have had 7,000+ people visit our blog. It has been amazing seeing visitors from all over the world take a peek on the things we are doing and learning here. Getting nominated and being a finalist for Education blog and being the Edublog of the Week jsut recently are only a couple of the great things that have happened since starting the blog. However, the best thing has been the excitement, fun and the learning that continues to happen for our students outside the walls of our class through the use of this blog! I hope that it continues to be a powerful tool for you. As well, this blog will always be a place for former students and families to come and check out to see what is going on. Pleas come back.

If you are one of our visitors, please take a moment to send us a comment and help us celebrate this milestone!

Now for the bad news.

We had a bit of a tragedy today in Science. Mr. Hancock was carried the tomato plant tray over to a separate area of the class so that the students would not have to crowd around the desks to see the plants, when suddenly the tomato tray slid off the desk and landed, kerplunk!, on the floor.

Woe!!! Oh poor tomatoes!

Mr. Hancock tried to pick them up and repair the damage as best as he could. However, they are now all mixed up and some of them may not survive. The next 24hrs will be very important in determining whether the emergency surgery on the tomatoes worked. Hopefully they will re-root themselves and continue to grow. This could affect our experiment as the conditions have now changed. Time will tell.

Here are some pictures of the plants today. You can definitely tell the difference. The damaged ones (Seed B) are on the right.

We were also talking today about photosynthesis and how tomato plants help create the air we breathe. We also learned that the little hairs on the tomato plant secrete a liquid that make the smell of the tomato plants and also deter insects from wanting to hurt the plant. Very cool! Here is a video about photosynthesis.

On Friday, one of our students is leaving us. As the students have finally obtained their last star, we are going to have a combined party to celebrate getting to 10,000 visitors on our blog and to give our student a final farewell send-off. If you would like to donate something as a snack for the party, please bring it by around lunch hour or in the morning with your child. Thank you!

Tomato Seeds Are A Go in T Minus 9…8…7…

May 17, 2010 eoin24 Comments 1 comment

Thursday was a busy day last week with the start of our second year doing the Tomatosphere tomato growing project. The students were all excited to get planting. As this is a multi-year project, our class was automatically signed up to do the tomato seed project again this year. As I told the students, this experiment is an actual live experiment with our results being combined with class across Canada in a test to see the viability in growing plants in a zero gravity environment. This year is very special as these seeds have actually been in space!

To start, we discussed why this experiment was important and why we might want to find the answer to this questions. We learned that the amount of food needed to go to Mars would be too great an amount to fit comfortably on the space shuttle packaged as it is now. However, if astronauts were able to grow their food on the way, it would not only save space, but also help provide clean air and water and give the astronauts something to do on the way.

We then used the links (you can find them on the left hand side) to learn more about Mars and compare it to Earth. We also had fun learning how old each of the students would be if they lived on Mars as well as how much they would weigh! I have to say, after all my wife’s wonderful cooking, Mars is looking pretty good right now!

Next, we learned about the tomato seed and plant and ended the morning by planting our seeds! Students planted two types of seeds: regular seeds and space seeds. As this is a real life experiment, we needed regular seeds to compare. However, WE DON’T KNOW WHICH ARE WHICH!!!!! In order to make sure there was no favoritism, we are not told which seeds are which until the end of the experiment! I LOVE SUSPENSE!!!

As the days go by we will be making observations. The success point for these seeds is whether or not they grow two leaves. We hope they will grow more of course but we need at least two leaves from each plant in order for the plant to be considered successful. At the end, students will be able to take the plants home. Hopefully students will get to take both types home but we will see.

I found some video on plant seed growth and germination. The first one is from the book The Carrot Seed, which is a very old book and not having anything to do with tomatoes but just substitute carrots for tomatoes in your head.

The second video is a neat animation of the journey of a seed which is kind of neat and is theoretically one way a seed can move from place to place.

The next video is a neat time-lapse showing the growth and germination of radish seeds; again nothing to do with tomatoes other than the same growth a tomato seed would go through if we could see our seeds from the side.

Enjoy and check tomorrow to see if there has been any growth in our tomato seeds!

Finding a Solution By Dissolving

May 6, 2010 eoin24 Comments 0 Comment

It has been a fast couple of weeks in Mr. H’s class. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t wonder incredulously where the time has gone. We have been having so much fun and there are so many events crowding the days in May that we may have to do May all over just so we can get everything in! Show of hands . . .?

Anyway, the students have been working very hard on all sorts of projects. In Social, students have been discussing and learning about jobs in the community. You can see a list of the jobs we brainstormed below:

Students are now working on reports on a type of job they are interested in. We used a couple of great kid friendly sites to learn more about specific careers and students are using the information to help them create their reports. We will also be doing Animotos of the jobs they have chosen to present to the class!

Science has been fascinating with lots of experiments happening as we continue with our unit on Properties of Matter. Students have been creating different kinds of solutions and testing to see what kinds of solids will dissolve in water. We have a couple of very interesting experiments happening. One of the experiments looks like it might take longer than I expected as the water does not seem to be evaporating as quickly as I would have like. As a demonstration, to created a solution of water and salt in a bowl, placed a sour cream container on top and wrapped the whole thing with saran-a-wrap. We had been talking about how important it was to take care of our water as part of Earth Day and how places like Saudi Arabia were having trouble with their water supply. It was a great topic because we had just had some visitors to our blog from Saudi Arabia that very morning. I told the students that Saudi Arabia was starting to look at changing salt water from the ocean to regular water for drinking and irrigation. That afternoon, when I did the demonstration, students were able to hypothesize that the salt water would evaporate into the container leaving the salt behind in the bowl. We then connected this to what Saudi Arabia might have to do to get more water! It was a great conversation! We are also creating crystals from sugar water. So two experiments on the go!

We will also be starting another long term project next week. Once again, our class has been sent seeds from the tomatosphere project which is run with the Canadian Space Agency. Classes are sent to packages of seeds; one package which are regular seeds and another package containing seeds that have been in space! We will be testing the seeds to see if being in space will make a difference to how the seeds grow. Problem is . . . we don’t know which are which! When the project is done and our results have been submitted, we will find out which seeds were the space seeds! Here is a video about the project:

Needed: In your child’s planners, students wrote down some very strange things. I asked the students to look around at home, with the help of their parents, to see if any of these items could be found at home and brought in to school to use for a Science experiment. I don’t expect families to purchase these things. I just want to check to see if there was any that could be lying around just waitin’ and askin’ to be used for the good of Science! If you have these items but expect to use them again, please don’t send them in as they may not come back in the best of shape! I am also wondering if anyone knows of a place in town that does helium balloons. Hmmmm!

For the next couple of weeks, we will not be having spelling tests as I would like to give students time to practice for the Spelling Bee. On May 17th, selected students will be participating in our school’s Spelling Bee. On the prior Friday, we will have our own Spelling Bee in the class to select students to go to the Spelling Bee. We will be selecting 4 students per grade to go. You should have seen a list of words and and letter in your child’s planner to explain the procedures. The words for the spelling bee will be selected from the words on the pages sent home.

Whew! That’s a lot of stuff! I should do this more often!!! 🙂

Finally, yesterday was a very special day especially for Jacob. It was May the 4th; the unofficial Star Wars holiday! (Get it? May the fourth?) Anyway, I found a funny video to help us celebrate even though we are a little late!

Beyond The Desk

The Class Blog for Mr. Hancock's Grade 5/6 Class

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