Grade 5 Activities (2012-13)

Invention and Innovation Pitch

You are going to create a new invention - either in reality or in theory. You will try to be as complete as possible in your description, or you will actually try to build it. Your invention should be something that can exist - nothing fanciful like time travel, for example.

When you have a good idea, with as many details worked already, write up a Pitch. In the pitch you need to cover:

a good description of your idea
what you plan to do (a presentation, or a prototype)
what kinds of things your team will have to do to complete the project

The Pitch Document (below)

simple_pitch_sheet.xls
File Size:	20 kb
File Type:	xls

Download File

Using Celtx to Write A Short Script

Celtx should already be installed on your lab computer, and you can download a free desktop version at home here.

The purpose of Celtx is to organize and automatically format a script or storyboard for a presentation, play, radio show, podcast, etc. It is very good at this once you get comfortable with its workflow. We'll go over the basics in class.

As a warm-up for the podcast you're going to be doing later, this assignment will be to write a short (~ 30 seconds or 100 words or 160 syllables) Public Service Announcement that you will star in that uses visual images (and audio images) to get people interested in helping to solve a problem in the world.

You may want to remind people:

to use a seat belt when driving
to not text while driving
that litter is everybody's problem and each of needs to avoid adding to it
to donate to a cause
that something is coming up soon and to get ready for it now

Use your imagination to come up with something interesting.

Color Palette Assignment: Converting Hex Values -
Due Dec. 21

Counting in Binary and Decimal and Hexadecimal

Part 2:
HEXADECIMAL!?!

        Yes, it's base 16.

16?!? But how does that work?

        You start counting using the regular digits 0-9 and then you continue counting with A, B, C, D, E and F after you reach 9.

        This is when those NYBBLES we talked about come into play. The value of each nybble in a byte gives you the value of the two hexadecimal digits in a byte.
Why do we need to know about hexadecimal?

        In most cases it isn't necessary, but there are a couple of times you'll regularly see hexadecimal numbers when using a computer and it can be useful to know what to do with them. One of these times is in error messages, which may or may not matter to you, but the other time is when colors are specified for computer applications.

        Computer colors are a mixture of three basic colors: Red, Green, and Blue. These are also referred to as RGB colors. To tell the computer how much of each color to mix together to make the desired color, three numbers are required: one for the Red, one for the Green and one for the Blue parts of the final color. These make a formula for creating a color: so much Red, so much Green, and so much Blue mixed together makes the color you want. So, for example, if I put a lot of Red and a lot of Green together with no Blue, I'll end up with some shade of yellow.

        On modern computers, one byte is used for each part of the RGB color formula, so there's one byte for Red, one byte for Green and one byte for Blue.

        As we now know, one byte can hold a number between 0 and 255. This means that using those three bytes together as color designators, we can have over 16 million different combinations of the three bytes (256 x 256 x 256).

        Now let's look at a couple of examples:

    1. Imagine what ways you can combine Red, Green and Blue to make, say, Orange.

        Orange is normally just a mixture of red and yellow, but we don't have yellow in our basic RGB trio. But if you know that combining Red and Green makes Yellow (as mentioned above), you can think of Orange as a combination of [Red + Green] + Red, which looks like we need about twice as much Red as Green. So, using percentages, we could have 100% Red + 50% Green + 0% Blue to make Orange.

    2.   Imagine ways you can lighten or darken a color by blending some shade of Gray with it.

        Bright Blue is 0000FF in hex. If I want a medium dark Blue, I could cut the FF down to this color 000080. And if I want something halfway in between that and full on, what would I use? (Try something that works out to 0 Red + 0 Green + 75% Blue) How would you describe these colors? #0000FF, #000080, #0000C0, #00FF00, #00C000, #008000, #FF0000, #330000, #660000, #990000, #CC0000 ?

        What would happen if you mix a light shade of Gray with Dark Blue, Med Blue, or Light Blue? Remember: a shade of Gray will always result when ALL THREE RGB numbers are equal at the same time. For example: FFFFFF, 000000, 292929, 3c3c3c, and so on will all make some shade of gray. (Black and white are the darkest and lightest forms of gray, respectively.)

        What happens when you use equal amounts of Red and Green with Blue? Try something like #cccc80. Is this the way you'd go to make something like Sky Blue?

        Use the Color Blender in Cool Links to try out all of these numbers. You can type them in on one of the two Color# lines. Also, try to predict what you would get halfway between two blended colors.

        Our next In-Class assignment will need you to be able to figure out how to designate various color combinations. Practice here.

Part 1: Check out WHAT IS BINARY?

        This will help you see how binary numbers are constructed. With only two digits (0,1) counting is easy, but the resulting numbers can be confusing. Because the definition of "digital" in the modern age is connected to a device using binary counting, it's important to understand how digital computers use binary numbering to do all their computational work.

        Be ready to turn binary numbers into decimal numbers, and decimal numbers into binary. We'll go over this in class in-depth this week.

        Practice using this pattern:
        128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1

<<---- CHECK OUT THE FLASHCARDS NEXT DOOR (best Study Method is 'Flashcards') NOTE: Decimal answer is inside parentheses with names of each binary digit listed afterwards. Please practice WITHOUT USING SCRATCH PAPER! In other words, do these in your head, just like the way we did it in class.

        Remember, there are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who get binary notation and those who don't.

        If you don't get the joke, let me know.

How Do We Grasp the Biggest Numbers?

If you could stack millions of pennies in nice neat stacks, how much space would you need?

For example, if you stacked a little over 49,000 pennies in the shape of a cube, it would only fill 12 inches on a side and 12 inches high: a cubic foot of pennies.

Take a look here to see what big numbers of pennies would look like - the MegaPenny Project

Naming Large Numbers

Computing has caused all of us to start using words that describe very, very large quantities. There's a simple pattern to some of them, but you need to know what the prefixes we use to describe big numbers are based on.

In the picture to the left, can you list the nine number names shown in order from smallest to largest?

Go to the Grade 5 section of the Cool Links page to find other sites that talk about big number names.

NEW - CHECK THIS OUT: Greek prefixes

View Class of 2015's Fifth Grade Podcasts here

Grade 5 Podcast Assignment - (May 7, 2012)

Choose between using Scratch, Movie Maker, or PowerPoint. Use the one you're most comfortable with to create a self-running presentation about your state

We'll be looking for interesting information that tells us what is most important about your state. Try to find unusual things about your state that people will want to remember.

Show us the people, places, and things that are important in the state. Again, make it interesting to your audience, and make it as factual as you can.

If you use images from the Internet, you must cite their source properly at the end. No copyrighted images allowed. (No watermarks!)

All information sources should be cited at the end as well.

This project is (was) due May 31, 2012. That gives (gave) you six class periods.

Submit your assignment here: