Develop a passion for learning. If you do,
you will never cease to grow.
Anthony J. D'Angelo

Welcome to our classroom website! 

Mrs. Fairlie and Mrs. MacKenzie hope that you find the information on this website helpful.  Please visit often for updates.

Summer Fun: I know some parents like to keep their kids on top of their academics during the summer months.  As a parent myself, I find it a challenge to get my kids to do some math or reading without using bribery. Today I found a website that might not need any bribery and will encourage use of those math skills.  Here's the scoop taken from freelyeducate.com:

"Your students will like this site!  Math Apprentice teaches a student how various careers use math.  But they don't teach math through a boring, lengthy, text-based method.  No, Math Apprentice gets your student happily involved by allowing them to choose a character who skateboards through town, visiting the different careers:
The student then interactively works on math problems related to the career of choice" It says it is for grades 4-7.

Try it out!-  Math Apprentice Website

A special shout out to our parent chaperones for the Rock Eagle field trip- Mr. Maicon, Mr. Jones, Mrs. Byrd, Mr. and Mrs. Seletsky, and Mrs. Manne, we couldn't have done it without you.  Thanks for being great sports!

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5/4/2012- Thank you to Mrs. Seletsky who came to our class for a whole morning last week to teach our class about economics.  The Junior Achievement program was great, but she really brought it to life for our students.

I learned about a new website called Tagxedo where you can form word clouds in different shapes.  I'm testing it out above using the standards for technology in education.  Like the students, I learn how to do new things every day!

4/22/2012- Thank you to Mrs. Maicon and Mrs. Jones for coming in on Friday to help our class tie-dye team shirts.  The process went very smoothly with your help and they came out great!   Happy Earth Day!

3/30/2012- Congratulations to Sidhesh Desai who has advanced to the state level of competition with his Media Festival project!
We hope everyone has a great spring break!

Science Experiments in March:
We did many experiments to demonstrate physical and chemical changes.  Our class observed steel wool rusting in water over a period of days.  We created a solid from a mixture of milk and vinegar by heating it in the microwave.  It was pretty gross!  Below are our pictures  of the experiment when we combined bromothymol blue with vinegar to observe a color change which is evidence of a chemical reaction. 

In the experiment below, the students recorded the physical properties of calcium chloride and tap water.  They then combined these in a baggie with a thermometer and observed a very quick temperature change taking place! 

Our last experiment was designed to make the law of conservation of mass obvious to students and to provide an example of how a chemical change can create a new substance that we may not see.  We combined baking soda and vinegar in a bottle and created a gas (However, we captured it in the balloon!).

3/20/2012- Thanks to all the parents who helped out at Science Zone today!  The kids always love Science Zone. 

I found a cool website today that I wanted to share: http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/
Type in the book that you are reading or just read and it will suggest other similar books.  Very cool.

3/14/2012- We celebrated Pi day today!
This morning we enjoyed four fun pi-related math stations.  At one with Mrs. MacKenzie, the students found the relationship between the diameter of an object to the circumference of the same object by cutting and comparing  yarn.  We learned the circumference was always about 3 times the diameter (or 3.14.... times the diameter!)

At Mrs. Fairlie's station, the students used both rulers and string as well as their circumference formula to find out what size bracelet would fit a partner's wrist.  

At Mrs. Holman's station, the students found the area of a paper plate using their formula.  Finally, they got to return to their seats to enjoy their slice of pie and practice some pi math!