5th Grade Honor Night Video

We'll see how many people actually look at the blog.
Here is a preview of one of the 5th grade videos for tomorrow night's graduation.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Ballroom Dancing

Today, the whole 5th grade went to perform their ballroom dancing routine for the State Conference of Principals at the Holidome. The students looked very professional in their dress clothes and looked great. They all danced through and around the tables while the guests at the conference at their lunch. Students performed the meranquie and the swing jitterbug in front of about 200 principals from all over the state of Kansas. The performance was followed up with a rousing roar of applause from all the guests.

After the performance, we all went to the park to eat our lunches. It was a beautiful day out with the sun shining and the wind held off long enough for us to enjoy the great outdoors for a day. This Friday, a select group of 5th graders will show off their ballroom dancing skills at the Steifel Theatre for a Salina Concert in front of the whole community. All students worked very hard and did a wonderful job during their performance today. They made Heusner Elementary and all of it's teachers and parents very proud. What a great group of 5th graders!

You can see more pictures by going to http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/359714.4d6f2e1e41a

The Great Egg Roll

Last week, Mr. Boyer's math class took part in a nationwide internet project called the Great Egg Roll. Our task was to roll a 2" plastic egg and then measure to see how far it went in feet and inches. After getting everyone's calculations, we then converted our results to only inches and we had to remember that 1 foot is equal to 12 inches. Our final task was to find the mean number of inches of the whole class.
Our class then wanted to see if the egg would roll farther with something in it. So we decided to wad up one whole sheet of paper and stuff it inside and record our results again. You can go to the following website to see our results.

Great Egg Roll 2008

5th Grade Checklist

Today we will be sending home with your student, a checklist of things that will be coming up these last few weeks of school. For 5th graders, there are a lot of events and items that your student will be looking forward to or need of importance. Look in your child's bookbag or trapper for this yellow note or you can download it by clicking the link below.

5th Grade Checklist

Freedom Dollars

For the past two months, our reading group has been collecting the Freedom Dollars from the local newspaper, Salina Journal. The dollars are in part of a story through the paper about the Underground Railroad and who can collect the most dollars through their own "network". Today was the day we turned all of ours in. We turned in a whopping total of 22,693 Freedom Dollars. Mrs. Karlin's brother-in-law (who has been recovering from surgery) spent his recovery time cutting out and collecting for our class. Through his friends at the recycling center, he was able to get several papers to cut from. He brought our class 11,508 from his cutting. Mr. Boyer's OSCAR class is indebted to Mr. who became a member of our Freedom Dollar network and hopefully helped us gather enough to win. To show our gratitude, we gave him a brand new pair of gold plated scissors (since his are probably dull after all that cutting)

If our class gets the most collected, we will earn ourselves a $200 certificate from Scholastic and an ice cream party from Dairy Queen, as well as our picture in the Salina Journal. Good luck to our class and a huge thank you to Mrs. Karlin's brother-in-law for helping us out.

WISH US LUCK!!

No School Reminder!

Just a reminder to everyone that there will be no school on Friday, Mar 7, because of a teacher inservice/workday. I know you all will miss our classroom dearly and be really disappointed about having a three day weekend. Well, enjoy your time off. Maybe if you're lucky, we will have some nice weather for a change. See you all Monday!!!

Silkworm Excitement!

Mr. Boyer's OSCAR class has just become the proud parents of 46 little baby silkworms. We are raising silkworms to go along with a book that we are reading called Project Mulberry. You can see a day by day (well almost) account of what is going on from our Wiki site.

http://misterboyer.pbwiki.com/Silkworm+Project

Congratulations to a Heusner Teacher

Heusner has routinely been noted about all of it's wonderful teachers on staff. So, when a teacher gets publically recognized, it makes us all beam with pride. Mr. Boyer's 5th grade class would like to hand out their congratulations to 4th grade teacher, Mr. Michel. He was awarded the Kansas Horizon Teaching Award, which is given to only a select few 1st year teachers in the state.

If you want to read more about Mr. Michel and the Horizon Award, click here: http://www.salina.com/rdnews/story/3408-teacher-gets-award

Congratulations Mr. Michel, Heusner is honored and proud to have a teacher like you in our building.

I Believe I Can Fly

State testing is just around the corner. For 6 months our 5th grade classes have learned the material that we need to be successful on the state test. To wish us good luck, the rest of the school held an assembly for all of our Heusner test takers. We have talked about how Michael Jordan set goals for himself in order to become successful. We have done the same thing. Each student has set a personal goal as to what they want to score on their tests. The assembly featured a standing ovation from the younger grades, a sing along with the school mascot, OSCAR, and the presentation of Achievement Awards from last year's tests. The theme song for us this year has been, "I Believe I Can Fly" from the movie Space Jam. After receiving our certificates we were left with a roaring round of applause from students and teachers and the song, "We Will Rock You!"
Good luck to all of our Heusner test takers in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. DO YOUR BEST ON THE TEST! Fly high and reach your goal. We know you can do it!

Parent/Teacher Conferences

A reminder to everyone that Wednesday, Feb 13 and Thursday, Feb 14 are parent teacher conferences.
Parents: If you have a conference time that will not work for you, please be sure to contact Mr. Boyer or the office to reschedule. We will be discussing things to expect about the upcoming state tests and talking about the student math and reading packets that will be going home over the next few weeks.

Students: Our Valentine's Party will be at 2:45 on Wednesday. And there will be NO SCHOOL for you on Thursday or Friday of this week.
Mr. Boyer's OSCAR Reading Class: A reminder that your book reports are due on Friday, February 29. Please make sure that you are staying on top of what you need to get those completed and turned in.

Weird Science

Science was fun this past week. We conducted an experiment on our own that dealt with polymers and elasticity. Our main purpose for conducting the experiment was so that we good practice using the steps of the Scientific Method. Our task was to see which was more elastic a Ziploc baggie or a plactic Dixie Cup. After creating our hypothesis about what would happen, we made some startling discoveries. Some students decided to take it a step further and ask themselves, "What would happen if..." Our imaginations went wild. We were again amazed at some of our discoveries. And we learned that some times in Science, things don't always happen like we think they should.

Family Math Night

Last night was Heusner Elementary's Family Math Night. Students and their parents went from classroom to classroom playing math games together. Each grade level had two games to play. The 5th graders played Factor Bowling and Frog Games. When students had been to three rooms and played three different games, they were eligible to participate in the Math Carnival located in the gym. A good time was all as almost 200 students from grades K-5 participated with their families.

Turtle Drill

Today our class had what our school calls a "Turtle Drill". This is a drill that helps us practice what to do when something unexpected happens at our school or an unwelcome visitor is in the building. We did a wonderful job of following directions so that everyone would be kept safe. You may want to talk to your child about steps we took to stay safe.

Boyer's Going Green

This week at Heusner students and staff participated in activities that practiced good energy saving and environmentally friendly habits. the idea came from some 4th grade students who are studying about the environment in Science. We made sure our lights were turned out when we were not in the room, started a classroom recycling box (how many times do we say, "Do we need this paper anymore, can I throw it away?") Friday, classes were asked to wear green clothes to finish off the week. The class with the most green clothing wins an extra recess. Our class wore a total of 52 green items.

4th Grade Program

It's program time again. This time the program was with the 4th grade classes. It was a program that we were quite familiar with, as we had done the same thing last year. This year's 4th graders changed it just enough to make it interesting. Their theme was the Amazing Race. The program and it's songs brought back many memories of our program with the aliens, hula dancers, cowboys, and the brightly colored spaceship that was built. The 4th graders did a great job and we wish them luck on their evening performance.
FIFTY NIFTY UNITED STATES!

Bully Prevention

Today we had a guest in our class, Mrs. Price, from Child Abuse Prevention Services. She taught us about bullying and the effects that bullying has on others. We did some role playing in which some of us had to portray the bully and others got to practice strategies to stop bullying. We then finished up our session by thanking our classmates for doing things for us when they didn't really have to. It was great to hear all the thank yous being given by our classmates to one another. Thank you Mrs. Price for coming to our classroom today.

3rd Grade Program

Today our class was treated to a special dress rehearsal performance of the 3rd grade program. Having been 3rd graders ourselves at one point, we were very familiar with the songs. We showed a great deal of respect to the 3rd graders by listening carefully to their speaking parts, modeling good assembly behavior for the younger students, and even though we knew most of the songs, refrained from singing along with them.
We also know that before the year is over, we will have our chance to put on a performance for the whole school and we hope that everyone is as respectful for us as we were today.

Red Ribbon Week

This week our school is doing things to celebrate Red Ribbon Week. Red Ribbon Week is a week that everyone focuses on Drug Awareness and shows their pride for being Drug Free. To celebrate each day, our StuCo has voted on some special way to show your pride with a different theme each day.


Monday - Crazy Hair Day - “Being Drug Free is Hair-Raising!”
Tuesday - Team Logo Day - “Winners are Drug Free and Proud!”
Wednesday - Twin Day - “Let’s support each other being drug free and proud!”
Thursday - Pajama Day - “Drugs are Tired!”
Friday - Heusner Spirit Day - “Heusner School is Drug Free!”

We are proud of our Heusner students and their dedication to Be Drug Free!

O.R.E.O Project

Today our class participated in a worldwide internet project. It's called the O.R.E.O Project. The task is to see how many Oreo cookies each student can stack one on top of the other.

The rules were simple:
1. Each student will have 2 attempts to create a cookie stack.
2. Students will place one cookie on the paper plate/table cloth and then add one
cookie at a time to the stack. Their partner will tally cookies as they are stacked.
3. Students may NOT adjust the cookie after they have placed the cookie on the
stack and moved their hand away. Cookies need to be freestanding and NOT
leaning against any kind of support.
4. A tumble has occurred once 3 or more cookies have tumbled on the stack. The
complete stack DOES not need to completely tumble for it to be called a tumble.

Once everyone has completed two attempts, our goal was to find the mean (average), median, mode, and range for our class. Our results were submitted online and added to the results of every other participating classroom throughout the world. We will be able to see how we stack up (pardon the pun) with other classrooms, when final results are tallied and released on October 17.
To see our results and pictures, you can visit our O.R.E.O. Project site at: http://www.usd305.com/heusner/teacher/Boyer/oreo%202007.htm

or see the final results from all participants at the official site: http://www.technospudprojects.com/Projects/OREO2007/oreo2007instructions.htm

ITBS Testing

It's mid-October and that means it's time for ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) testing. Students will participate in three days of testing in the areas of reading comprehension, math, language, grammar, science, and social studies. We will be taking these tests on Tuesday, October 16-Thursday October 18. Look for a note in Friday's homework folder that gives a little more detail about what to expect from the upcoming week.

Oh and by the way, Halloween is almost here.