Week 4 (September 9-13)

We had our first geography test on Tuesday, so I decided to prep the students on Monday with a review game, originally called "Stinky Feet Review Game."  I got the idea from Pinterest.  I divided the class into two teams and took turns asking each team a question.  When they got the question right, one student from the group was asked to come to the board and randomly select a Post-It note.  On it was a point value--either a positive or negative number!  That's the stinky part of the game.  I added or subtracted scores as we went along, and the kids had a blast playing this game.  Next time, I'll have the team with the lowest score be the "winner."  I plan to mix it up each time we play.   

One of the responsibilities of the 5th grade students is to raise and lower the flag each day.  On Tuesday, the 5th graders were trained for flag duty.  We had four sixth-grade students train our 5th graders.  The 6th graders did a fabulous job!

 And our 5th graders caught on quickly.

On Wednesday, we got a new document camera for our classroom:

I battled a cold all week and hardly had a voice.  By Thursday, I was in a fog.  I came to school, even though I felt horrible, and was surprised with a cup of chicken noodle soup from a student in the other 5th grade class!  It was delicious!

I enjoyed it at home because I was too sick to stay at school.  A substitute came at 11 a.m.

I got some rest and tried it again the next day.  I still wasn't feeling my best, but I hate missing school.

This week, in geography, we learned about the five themes of geography.  I shared a silly video (by teacher James White) to start the lesson and grab the students' attention:

We did a group activity and completed two graphic organizers.  Here's one:

We also learned the silly mnemonic device of "My Hand Really Likes Pizza" to remember the five themes: Movement, Human-Environment Interaction, Regions, Location, and Place.  We traced one of our hands and wrote a theme name on each finger.

 

The kids were so sweet and well-behaved this week while I was sick.  I decided that they should be treated, so on Friday we all enjoyed popsicles: