Ms. Grabowski's Blog

5th Grade Science
*Christmas break is here!!! Many of you are very excited.
*Here is what lies ahead for the week. We are having a Science Fair this year, so this week
we will talk about the upcoming events for the Science Fair. We will begin this when we
get back from our break. I am taking the students to the computer lab to do some
research for topics that they may have in mind. I will be showing them the amount of
work that the Science Fair will entail.

6th Grade Science
*Same criteria above, except we will be doing two small activities on force and motion both
Monday and Tuesday. Then we will be looking at research for the Science Fair. This
year, the 6th graders will have an easier time with the Science Fair because they
know the amount of work that is put into it, since they started the fair last year.

Happy Holidays!!! Merry Christmas to ALL!!!

5th Grade Science
*We will be finishing a lab from last week on Ecosystems.
*Students will be reading pages 142-150.
*The students will receive questions for this section.
*I will also give them a small outline to go with this section.
*By Friday, we will begin notes for our next section.

6th Grade Science
*This week, we will finish reading pages 606-610.
*The students will also receive a study guide for the test which will be on Friday.
*The students will work on questions in class, along with worksheets to go along with this
section.
*I am here in the morning all week. On Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday mornings, the students can come in for help.

5th Grade Science
I hope that your Thanksgiving was wonderful. Now it is time to get back to Science!!!
We are beginning Ecosystems. The students will take notes on our first lesson of Ecosystems. They will continue with the vocabulary for this lesson.
The students will need to bring in magazines for our lab on Wednesday.
We are doing a lab that pertains to animals and plants and the type of ecosystem that they belong to. This will take us both Wednesday and Thursday.

6th Grade Science
The students have been working really hard on the math problems that we have been working on in science. We are going to read Lesson 1 of Forces and Motion. The students will receive questions to go along with this lesson. We were suppose to have a quiz before they left for the break, but I have decided to put it off to this week. It will be a "POP" quiz, so I will not tell them the exact date. It will be before Friday.

NO SCHOOL Friday-Faculty Retreat!!

5th Grade Science
This week, we will finish up with Plant Life Cycles. We are trying to cut down on copies,
so I will be giving the students a Study Guide on Monday that they will copy from the
projector. Students who usually receive my handouts will still get those. The test will be on Friday, November 21st. I will be having review sessions on Wednesday and Thursday, in the morning. Sessions will start at 7:30. A lot of students who attend my review sessions have improved on their tests.

6th Grade Science
We are beginning a new lesson on Force and Energy. This lesson is extremely detailed, so the students have been taking notes on what we will be studying. On Wednesday, the students will be learning formulas to the equations that we will be using in this lesson. I am around Wednesday after school and Thursday after school if they get confused with the equations. We will spend all week working with this lesson. Students will receive some short problems on the equations and possible a "pop" quiz that will have some problems for them to work out.

Next week is Conferences and Thanksgiving break. Parents, please check over the pink sheet that will be going home on Monday, November 17th. This sheet indicates the time that you will attend conferences. Have a great week!!

5th Grade Science
*The blogs are finally working. Well, here is where we stand for the week. We just finished
our lesson on Plant Life Cycles. The students have many details regarding this lesson,
so I took my time explaining this section. We also started a lab on lima beans. We will
be looking at the inside of the lima bean and peeling off the seed coat. Some students
have asked to grow lima bean plants, so I have some lima beans left over for them to
do this small experiment. The students will be receiving questions regarding this section.
I will inform the students of when their test will be on this lesson.

6th Grade Science
*The students had their test on Chapter 10 Chemical changes and Chemical Properties. We
did a great lab on this section. This is our seventh lab, so the students should be writing
up all lab write-ups in the correct format. On Wednesday, I will be going over the
common mistakes that I am finding on all lab write-ups. We will move into our next
section which will deal with Force and Energy.

*Thanksgiving is almost here, which means that the Science Fair will be right around
the corner. I am hoping that some students are beginning to think of topics that they
may want to investigate for their science project. We will be going into the computer
lab in the next couple of weeks, to search around for different topics that might interest
them.

5th Grade Science
* The tests from last week on Lesson 1 Reproduction were really good. I could tell that many
of the students studied really hard. This week, we will begin a long lesson on Plant Life
Cycles. I am introducing this on Monday, and the lesson has a great amount of notes. I am
striving for us to be finished with the notes by Wednesday, since we have shorten our
schedule for the afternoon on Monday due to the assembly. The students will have to do the
vocabulary once we are finished with the notes. I will let them know ahead of time when the
vocabulary will be due. We will also begin reading the new lesson. I have to see how far we
get in order to begin questions with this lesson. Since this is a very detailed lesson, I like to
take time explaining it so that the students will process all of the information that goes along
with this lesson.

6th Grade Science
* We are beginning a new lesson this week-Lesson 2 Chemical Properties. We will begin
reading this lesson on Monday. We are discussing Acids and Bases. The students will
be doing a lab on Wednesday so that they can understand ph levels and the types of
food that are acids and bases. I will also incorporate questions and a small outine for this
lesson. The students will receive a study guide on Thursday. They will have a test on
Lessons 1 & 2 of Chemical Changes on Tuesday, November 11th.

*The quarter ends on Friday, November 7th and Report Cards are being distributed on Friday,
November 14th.

5th Grade Science
*We are going to be starting a new lesson this week. It is on Plant Life Cycles. There is a great amount of information detailed in this lesson. What I decided to do is to have the students take a small quiz on the previous lesson that we had just finished, and then move on to Plant Life Cycles. The students will have a "Pop" quiz sometime this week. It will not be on Halloween, so do not worry. The quiz will consist of the five vocabulary words that some of the students had written down on notecards. Others have these words along with the definition in their notebooks. I will move onto Plant Life Cycles either Wednesday, or Thursday, depending on how far we get with questions from the previous lesson, and a small outline. Students should be reviewing their notecards this week. The other part of the quiz, will be covered from some of the notes that we took in class. The students should review these. It is a "Pop" quiz, so I am not telling the students the exact date of when they will be having it.
*By Thursday, the students should have brought in a container. We are doing a Halloween lab, so the container will be what the students will store their materials in. We are making slime!!!

6th Grade Science
*This week, the students will be having a small quiz on a lab that we did last week. We will also move on to our next lesson, which is chemical properties. The students will have notes and a small outline to work on. On Friday, we will be making slime, so the students were asked to bring in a container to take the slime home.

*Next week Friday, the trimester ends!!!

5th Grade Science
This week Tuesday, the students will have a test on Plants. They received a study guide last week, and I have been here in the morning for review sessions. Last Friday, I had about 10 students and on Monday, I had about 6 students. It is nice to see that the students are taking an extra step in coming in early for the review. We will begin a new lesson, which continues with the next part of plants-reproduction. We will have notes this week, and I will be lecturing on this topic.

6th Grade Science
*The 6th graders received their science tests back today. I am very pleased at how many students came in for the review session the previous days before the test. All of the desks were filled last week Wednesday. We are starting a new lesson on chemical changes. We will be working on a couple of labs along with notes for this lesson. I will be lecturing in class about the notes that the students will be receiving.

*Students and Parents- If a child misses a lab that we did in school, I am still going to provide them with some type of work to go along with what they missed. I am incorporating "hands on" experiments this year, and I think that all children should participate in some way even if they are absent on the day of the experiment. If your child is absent on the day of a lab, please make sure that they come and ask what they have missed.

5th Grade Science
*This week, we have many things occurring. We are ending our lesson on Plants. The
the students will receive a study guide on Wednesday. They will have a test on Plants next
week Tuesday. I also have a lab that we will be working on for Friday. I will be doing the
experiment in our classroom, since the lab is already booked for that day. I will have
small study sessions during the mornings of Thursday, October 15- Monday, October 20th.
Any students that need extra help before the test, can come in during the morning.

6th Grade Science
*Last week, the students received a study guide for the test that will be on Thursday. I let
the students know that they can come to me for help on both Tuesday and Wednesday
morning. On Friday, we will begin our next lesson which is on Chemical Changes.

Have a great week.

5th Grade Science
*This week, we will finish up our notes for plants. Plants is a very long lesson, so I like to take
as much time with it as I can. Many details fufill this lesson, along with vocabulary. The
students will be receiving both questions and a couple of worksheets for this lesson. We
be reading the entire lesson this week, which is pages 48-57. I am going to be lecturing during
our reading, so students can understand what the lesson is discussing.

6th Grade Science
*This week, we will finish up the last lesson, Lesson 4. This lesson is on Water and Mixtures.
We will read the entire lesson this week, and the students will receive questions that go along
with the lesson. I am also going to show them a small experiment so that they will understand
how mixtures form and what happens to different substances when they are mixed together.
On Thursday, I will be giving the students a study guide for the next test. The test will cover
Lessons 3 & 4 of this section. The students will have their test on Wednesday, October 13th. I will have review sessions this week. We will read the lesson on
Tuesday, October 7, so students are more than welcome to come in for help this week. I am
here early in the morning at 7:25.

Quick Reminders- Progress Reports will be going home on Wednesday, October 8th. The students must bring back the top form with both their signature and a parent signature. There
is No School on Friday, due to a Faculty In-Service, and No School Monday for Columbus Day.
Have a great week!!!