The 5th grade Science Common Core asks students to "Compare the weight of an object to the sum of the weight of its parts before and after an interaction."  We combined this with practice in measuring mass.
     Before creating a situation with a real "interaction", our tasks recommend assembling an object and comparing the mass of its parts to its total mass.
     We used pop-cubes to assemble a collaborative creation with a partner.  Robots were very popular!
     Students measured the mass of their creation.  Then, they broke apart their creation into 2 or 3 parts.  They measured the mass of each part and added to see if they totaled the the mass of the whole creation. 


     Generally speaking, all totals were correct.  There were a few differences, but we agreed that our scales are a little sensitive, so that probably accounted for it.
     The last step was to display their data.  There were many great ones, but I forgot to tell them to put their names on the back, so I can't share them here!  Here are some examples:

     One of my goals is to create more anchor charts for my classroom.  Instead of re-teaching a lesson on which we've grown rusty, an anchor chart can be the brief reminder of the main points.  Students can refer to it at any time.  This is one I put up this week.  Do you have charts your kids depend on?

     We added this Angle-Maker to our math notebooks. We copied and cut it out of card stock and added hands with a brad. 

     Students can quickly make angles of specific measures. It's an easy formative assessment to ask students to make a 90* or 45* angle, for example.  I can quickly see if they have the idea.  I can ask for various classifications of angle - right, obtuse, acute - and students can hold up their notebook for me to see.  Partners can challenge each other to make or label their own angles.

As part of our genetics studies, we had a parent volunteer visit our classroom and help us make DNA models. Our helpful mom briefly explained how the different combinations of all traits come from the DNA strands.

She supplied students with chenille sticks: full-length sticks and some cut into thirds.