Wormbins

This week you will need to start writing about a topic that interests you, write why it interests you , what you already know about the topic and things you want to find out about. This will be the starting point for your Speech.  Your information should be typed and saved to your flash drive.

We will then upload them to blog called Speeches where everyone in the class will post their ideas. Over the next two weeks we will be commenting on each others work in class and on the blog, giving feedback or information to the writer.

Information needs to be at school by Friday 2nd May. Please make sure you give your post a title eg Gardening by Darren

As a part of our unit on Identity and Values Year 5 students looked at the part played by famous Australians in developing who we are as a nation. The humour, the mate-ship, the easy going nature, the inventiveness and the patriotism  are all displayed in the characters that we have studied. As well as doctors who have made great advancement in research and development in the medical fields, the talented artists in all fields: authors, singers, painters and movie stars.

Exceptional work Elyse with two examples of Famous Australians

Our aim was to try and find things in nature that would float or sink. We floated all these boat creations to see if they would float or sink. They had to be able to hold a lego man.

We made our boat creations from bark, leaves, sticks, vines, reeds, palm leaves and seed pods.

We filled a tub with water and placed our creations carefully to test them. We tested them in three ways:

1. To see if they stayed afloat
2. To see if they could stay afloat in heavy winds
3. To see if they could stay afloat in strong wave action

We used a book to create the winds and we used our hand to stir the water and make the waves.

Our observation

Lisa’s boat made of paper bark and plain bark wrapped with leaves floated a long time and passed all three tests. Jessica’s, Alexis’s, Chenaya’s, Julian’s and Abby’s passed only two of the three tests. The rest sank immediately when placed in the water.

Our findings

We found bark’s not the best thing to use, leaves float well but when they fill with water they sink. Paper bark was the best to use because it is light and flexible, it had many layers which made it waterproof. It’s canoe like shape made it stable and harder for the water to get into. The curved design and the sides going up made it harder for the water to get in as well.

Image from Wikipedia

The thunder rattled the house like a giant using my home as a maraca. We were so worried as the storm went on.  Although we were scared we knew it was just the clouds clapping and making a tune. We were scared no longer as we faced our fear and danced to the beat of the musical sky. All of our family were grateful for our plants to get some water, but the darkness of the night sucked-up our happiness. There we were sitting in front of the window watching the heavens above pouring buckets of water on the roof.

My heart beat faster as the shadow of the trees looked like a monstrous creature lurking in the garden. The lightening flashed on and off as it stretched along the night sky. It was the only light as all the power in the street had turned off.

I raced off to bed as my fear scattered along my body. I got to sleep and the next morning I was more grateful than last night.

Image by Erik Kolstad via Flickr

Outside the wind was tearing at the trees, ripping leaves off them as though they were feathers.Scary flashes of lighting zipping down to the ground while burning parts of the grass.

The world was lit up so much it was like day time. The rain was thrashing at the roof like the roof was it’s worst enemy.

Fantastic work everyone on your Capital Cities projects. It was like I was watching TV commercials. I was expecting to see clear information and some pictures and but all the extra music, sounds and voiceovers made it really enjoyable to mark your homework.

• Courtney - fantastic voice over
• Tim - I can’t believe you found such great music on CCMixter
• Alexis - Such interesting facts
• Pheobe - AMAZING use of sounds from the Freesound Project

I’ve uploaded all the movie’s that I could. Remember just use your first name and you should be fine. Have a look at them below. They have all been given a Creative Commons License which means if someone likes your work then they can reuse but they have to attribute it to you and they can’t make money from it.

I have been looking at other classblogs recently and realised that we should probably have some guidelines for using blogs. Some important ones are:

• Try to work with a parent or older sibling. It’s more fun and safer.
• Don’t use any identifying information.

Have a look at these guidelines from Singapore. Are they a good start for us? Can you think of any extra’s?