Thursday, January 31, 2019

Team Gibbas Infomercials


Team Gibbas Infomercials
By Student Blogger Victoria

In January the Gibbas team learned about Infomercials. To learn about this topic we watched the Infomercial Shamwow. After watching Shamwow we had to identify the claim and then the reasons. Finally, we answered a question. The question was, "Were you persuaded to buy the Shamwow towel after watching the commercial why or why not?" After the infomercial we made our own infomercials! We got school supplies to created our own infomercial. One of the groups got a flashlight and created the Mega Shine! Another group got a whiteboard eraser and created the Green Monster! The third group got whiteboard cleaner and called it Extra Expo Clean! The fourth group decided that they wanted a calculator and then called it The Crazy Calculator! Another one of the groups got some wipes and then they called them Shwipes! Then the product everybody in Mrs.Gibbas's class uses at one point, Bobby Tape! Finally the infomercial that everybody loved, Yo Magnets! Everyone had so much fun! Some people wanted to buy our products and some didn't. I am sure that Team Gibbas enjoyed this project and I am almost 90% sure Mrs.Gibbas's class would like to do it again!




Sunday, January 27, 2019

Kindness Counts

As we begin our week long celebration of kindness, I thought it was appropriate to look back at how we began our school year celebrating kindness with Trashcan Lid Productions' Sticks and Stones program.  Students embraced kindness through discussion, music, and multimedia. 
 

Thank you Trashcan Lid Productions for bringing the Sticks and Stones program to Proctor School and reminding us all how important it is to be kind.

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Tie Dye


Tie-Dye
By Student Blogger Sam

¨Hey Braden can you pass me a blue it looks awesome!¨ I exclaimed.
Earlier today we did tie-dye. We did tie-dye for two reasons. The first reason is we will wear our t-shirts, that were really fun to make, when it is Kindness Week. The other reason is that we will wear our t-shirts in our chorus concert where we will sing songs and be like viewers of Woodstock in 1969.
We did tie-dye with our CLIC teacher Ms. Cahill. We had four colors. They were a yellowish-orange, red, blue, and purple. You could decide how much or how little of a color you wanted. It was very fun and I hope that we do it again.


Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Endangered Animals

Endangered Animals
By Student Blogger Annie

Did you know that sea otters have the thickest fur of any animal in the planet? We learned this and many other facts when Change is Simple visited our school Monday, January 14th and taught us about endangered animals.They had us do a lot of fun activities.
The first activity they had us do was compare yourself to an animal. “I am like the chimpanzee because we both…”

 






The second activity we did was put your animal card where you think it lives on a giant world map.
We became scientists and we created a species profile for our animal. We had three questions to answer about the animal we were given. The first question was “what is the name of your animal?” The second question was “what type of animal is it?” For instance is it a mammal, reptile, amphibian, bird or fish. The third question was why is your animal endangered? The choices they gave us were illegal hunting or fishing, pollution, habitat loss or sickness and disease.
The last activity we did was musical chairs but instead of chairs we used food and water resources.

 
Finally Change is Simple issued the fourth grade a challenge to see which class could pick up the most trash at recess.
Thank you Change is Simple we always love when you come to our school!

Friday, January 11, 2019

Learning About Infrared Technology

Which color is the coolest?
By Student Blogger - Lyra


On Tuesday, Mr. DiCarlo, a professor at Merrimack College, came in and and taught us about infrared energy by using a special camera. The camera detects how hot or cold certain things are. Mr. DiCarlo gave us ice cubes to rub on our faces. Blue is cold, so when Mr. DiCarlo pointed the camera at us, our hands and faces and  were blue from rubbing the ice cubes! The camera can see through a black bag, so if you put your hand in it, then the camera would see your hand. I thought learning how the camera detected radiation was cool and interesting.

Thank you Mr. DiCarlo for helping us learn science!

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Solving problems the Rube Goldberg way

As a culminating activity for our science unit exploring the ways in which energy is transferred, Team Gibbas scientists designed and built machines similar to Rube Goldberg's devices.  Students researched Rube Goldberg's devices then chose a problem or task for their machine to complete.

Check out the pictures and student written descriptions of machines.

Akaden

We made a Rube Goldberg machine that is called Akaden that allowed us to smash a bug. At first, we tried to make the Akaden open a door. But, then the force of the shoe swinging and hitting the door was not enough to push the door open. So then, we went through a lot of thinking. But finally, we thought of what the Akaden can do. We decided to make the Akaden smash a bug. It took lots of attempts for it to still not work but it is fine. It started with a wheel that was hanging from a rope of tape that allowed it to zipline down a jump rope. Then, it when it got to the end it hit  some giant boards that acted as Domino's. Then the last domino fell on a piece of tape that was holding a shoe from falling that caused the shoe to fall and smash the bug. (a clothespin acted as the bug).


Sharpening a pencil

We designed our Rube Goldberg machine to sharpen a pencil automatically. A fan was supposed to push down some dominoes and push a pencil on a train into the sharpener. Were we successful? No. Unfortunately we could not get the contraption to work. But we had a lot of fun making it and showing it to the class.

Open Desk Machine

Our objective for the Rube Goldberg machine was to open a desk. It starts with closing the door which made a rock hit dominoes that hit a ball. The ball went down a tube and hit another ball which went down another tube and hit more domino's. Then they hit a ball to knock over a pole and the pole would hit the button to turn an air pump on and blow up a beach ball to open the desk. Our machine was successful until the ball didn’t hit the stick as hard as we needed it to so the pump didn’t turn on. The ball did not blow up so we had to press the button ourselves.  

                  The Ultimate Paper Passer

Our machine included wood, nails, dominoes, string, a tennis ball, a box, a pulley, and paper. The problem we were trying to solve was passing out papers and taking the spot of the teacher or the paper passers. Our machine didn't work at first because the papers were getting stuck in the box so somebody started pushing the papers so they could get out onto the desk. In the end our invention worked with some help.


Monkey C Monkey Flip a Page

Our Rube Goldberg machine was called Monkey C Monkey Flip a Page. Its purpose was to flip a page on an easel. The materials we used were; an easel, meter sticks, rope, yellow duck tape, a soccer ball, scissors, rubber/bouncy balls, a chair, string, and a pulley. The pulley did not work for us because it was set up wrong. Our machine starting off by rolling a soccer ball down the meter stick ramp, then the soccer ball would hit a pair of scissors tied to a piece of string which would make it swing and break a weak piece of tape that was attached to an easel which was also attached to a light bouncy ball and the light bouncy ball was attached to a page on the easel. Next, we were supposedly supposed to use a pulley that was taped to two big bouncy balls and the machine was supposed flip the page using the pulley. Unfortunately our machine was not successful.

The Bell Goes Ring-a-Ding-Ding
Our machine was supposed to ring a bell. We did that by rolling a marble down a pvc pipe. The marble would go into a blue track and when the marble came out of the blue tube it would hit some dominoes that hit a car and the car drove and hit a bell. That is how our Rube Goldberg machine worked. WE WERE SUCCESSFUL 10 TIMES! We were really proud of our work. We each brought in our own materials and it went very well.


Project Open Sesame

Our problem was to open a book and we succeeded one and a half times. It worked by us knocking a domino down and then other dominoes would all fall down knocking a few dominoes tied together. Then the tied together dominoes would  fall down and knock the book down flat on the desk, opened.


Deskinator
Our problem was to open a desk. We made a paper ramp that balanced on six yard sticks that were taped together. The paper ramp also balanced on books. Then we put a paper ball on the ramp and it  was supposed to hit dominoes and push another ball. Next the other ball was supposed to hit books but instead it hit a heavy ball. The ball was attached to a pulley and on the other side of the pulley it was attached to the inside cover of the desk. Unfortunately we did not succeed but we hope next time we will.

Ring a-ling ling bell

Our Rube Goldberg machine was called Ring a-ling ling bell. It was supposed to be a simple way to push in a chair. But we didn't have enough time to build it, so we just changed our idea to a simple way to ring a bell. But we didn't like that idea so we changed it to Ring a-ling  ling bell. A simple way to push your chair was paper towel tubes that would have a bouncy ball in it, and the bouncy ball go down the track and hit a basketball which would hit a dictionary which would hit the legs on a chair and push in the chair. Like we said we had no time for that. In Ring a-ling ling bell, lots of paper towel tubes were attached to each other  to make a track. Somebody would hold up a bell and this time a marble would hit the bell. Then the bell was supposed to ring. We were very successful. We had around twenty fails and about six successes. We are very proud about our work. We also had lots of fun doing the Rube Goldberg machine!