Welcome to Mrs. Ditolla's Fifth Grade
Welcome to 5th grade! My name is Mrs. Ditolla and I have been teaching 5th grade in Hudson since 2005. I attended the University of New Hampshire in Durham for my undergraduate work in child development and the UNH campus in Manchester for my Masters degree in elementary education. My students make me laugh everyday and I am so fortunate to be working in such a creative environment. Fifth grade is fun, entertaining, challenging, motivating, and rewarding all at once! Read my teaching philosophy here to find out more about my educational pedagogy and how I manage my classroom.
Teaching Philosophy
Philosophy of Teaching
My teaching philosophy is guided by the principle that teaching should create educational experiences and steer students into a direction of positive learning. I believe teaching is similar to coaching, modeling, and mentoring.
LEGO Enrichment!
The Lego enrichment was a great success! The students were extremely creative, building inventive structures and unique creatures! I was very impressed with the students' ingenuity!
Pennies for Patients...WE Are the WINNERS!
The following are the results for the "Pennies for Patients" fundraiser. As a school, we raised almost $3,000.00! Great job everyone!
THIRD GRADE: Sewade- $246.78, Armstrong- $306.96, Eneguess- $242.66, and L. Hurley- $233.81
FOURTH GRADE: Goss- $152.83, Kingsley- $170.84, J.Hurley- $117.32, Laws- $252.47
FIFTH GRADE: Vesey- $166.18, Gaynor- $319.91, Ditolla- $393.65, and Crivac- $132.22
Solar Ovens!
The students just finished putting together their solar ovens. Using a pizza box, clear wrap, tinfoil, a wooden stick, and black construction paper, the students made their own personal homemade solar oven. Together, we tested out the solar ovens by"baking" s'mores. Since the sun is not strong enough to have the oven reach favorable tempatures for cooking, we used a flood lamp and talked about the difference between solar and heat energy. The ovens reached about 114 degrees! When used outside in the summer, the ovens can reach above 200 dgrees! What will you cook this summer?
Hatching Time...Eastern Brook Trout & Chicken Eggs
UPDATE #2: We left the eggs in the incubator and 1 egg has hatched! A surprise to us all! We are watching it closely and hoping it stays healthy.
The 5th grade is eagerly awaiting the hatching of Eastern Brook Trout eggs and chicken eggs. UPDATE: The Trout eggs have started to hatch...the small fry can be seen near the bottom of the tank. On a sad note we had no luck with our 6 chicken eggs this year. We are not sure what went wrong, but we are not giving up. We are now looking into trying to hatch duck eggs using a diffrent incubator.
Ditolla's Dialogue - Monthly Newsletters
Every month I send home a monthly newsletter to inform parents and students about future events, projects, and fun lessons that the students have been working on within the 5th grade curriculum. It is a great way to communicate what is happening within room 104!
Exploring energy through roller coasters
Students explore potential and kinetic energy with mini roller coaster models. We used pipe insulation to represent the roller coaster tracks and a marble to represent the roller coaster. The marble had to have enough potential energy to survive two loops on the tracks! The students were quite successful.
2012 Winter Olympics
Go Canada!
Black History Month Presentations
Students worked hard on writing biographies for Black History Month. Their oral presentations, which they had to present in first person, were outstanding! Job well done!
Owl Pellet Pictures
Student enjoy discesting owl pellets!
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Tuesday, May 1st
