Living Wax Museum
On Thursday, June 20th, the fifth graders at BES created their annual Living Wax Museum. The fifth graders did an excellent job this year and despite the heat, the students, as wax figures, kept the museum goers engaged with their attention to detail, research, presentation, artwork and costumes.
Each year as a final Social Studies assignment, fifth grade Mountaineers select a historical figure or famous person for a biography project. After doing research on their subject, the students organize their notes in chronological order and present their story.
The final presentation is when the students transform into the “wax figure”.
Students from other grade levels, family members, and teachers visited the “museum” pressing the “wax figure’s” buzzers to learn more.
Mrs. Walsh, Ms. Phillip, Mr. Moseley and Mr. Turetsky were impressed with the students’ research and presentations this year.
Thank you to retired 5th grade teacher Mrs. DeMagistris for being the museum’s guest of honor and for bringing the tradition of the Wax Museum project to fifth grade at BES.
5th Grade Water Rockets
The fifth graders in Mrs. Walsh’s Science class were asked the following questions:
What makes rockets fly straight? What makes rockets fly far? Why use water to make the rocket fly?
The fifth graders were then asked to design a two-liter water rocket. The goal of the design was to launch with the maximum distance and hang time. Again, similar to the “egg-stronaut” design challenge, students learned and grew from their engineering failures and successes during launch day.
Several grade levels came out to watch the students’ launches and had many wonderful questions and comments about the students’ designs.
Great work Mountaineers!
photos: BCSD Communications and Mr. Moseley
Egg-stronaut Re-entry
Recently, Ms. Walsh’s fifth grade science class held their annual ‘egg-stronaut re-entry’. Each fifth-grade student used an engineering design process to create, test and analyze a model capsule and parachute that astronauts use when reentering Earth’s atmosphere.
The design goal was to slow the descent and minimize the force of impact, allowing their “eggstronaut” to land safely and without cracking on “re-entry day”.
On “re-entry day”, Mrs. Walsh drops the ‘egg-stronaut’ capsules from her science room window on the second floor of BES.
The “re-entry day” was exciting for the fifth graders and the results for each student led to thoughtful discussions of their design thought processes.
Great work fifth grade engineers!