SCIENCE
EARTH SCIENCE INQUIRY PROJECT4th graders are using a new to tool to share their learning. Google Slides is a presentation tool much like Keynote and Powerpoint. The benefit of using Slides is that students may work collaboratively from any device and the project is stored in Drive for easy access and sharing. Students had a chance to play with this new tool before using it to show off their learning. Next, learners teamed up with classmates who studied the same topic, and worked together to build a presentation to teach their classmates. Project guidelines and details are posted in Google Classroom. Ask your child to show you! Next week, students will share presentations in class. This is a wonderful opportunity for learners to become teachers. Students have really enjoyed learning about how volcanoes, glaciers, and earthquakes change the surface of the earth! MATHMany STRATEGIES FOR MULTIPLYING NUMBERS![]() In Chapter 2, we worked with many strategies for multiplying multi-digit factors by one-digit factors. We used bar models to model comparison problems. We also used area models, expanded form, partial products, the distributive property, and finally we practiced the standard regrouping algorithm. Students showed their learning through writing, drawing, designing problems, completing a performance task, and finally a unit test will take place on Monday. In Chapter 3, multiplication of multi-digit factors by multi-digit factors will be the focus. Ask your child which strategy he/she prefers for solving multiplication problems. Can he/she share an additional strategy and show you how it differs? TOOLSGOOGLE CLASSROOMThis space is quickly becoming a powerful part of our 4K/4W learning community. We have asked students to make a regular, daily habit during homework time to check the Google Classroom stream for any announcements, assignment updates, or feedback from teachers. While we don't have accounts for parents, you are encouraged to use your child's log-in information to look around and see what's happening. Thank you for supporting your child's use of this tool at home! APPS For MOBILE DEVICESDoes your child use a mobile device at school or at home? These apps will help support our work at school and help get the most out of mobile devices! Reflex Math Sumdog Google Drive Google Classroom Google Docs Google Slides Vocabulary Spelling City
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We begin quarter 2 with all our routines and expectations in place. This is very exciting for us as we can now really get down to the work at hand! READING We are just about done with myths. Students have read, heard, or performed at least 9 different Greek myths over the past few weeks. This week they were partnered up with the task of creating a poster illustrating an allusion (language that comes from a myth but is used in present day). Students worked hard on these posters and are proud of their final products. We also used Google Classroom for a final assessment about allusions. What a great tool! Questions for discussion: *Which myth did you create a poster for? Tell me about it. *What are some of the allusions you learned? *What book are you reading during silent reading time? ENGLISH The kids are working hard at revising their realistic fiction stories. We learned ARMS as a strategy for helping us revise. A=add any descriptive language R=remove anything that doesn't need to be there M=move things around S=substitute boring words with more interesting language Next week we will edit our papers and type the final copy! Another skill we worked on was using quotation marks in dialogue, which many students were then able to apply to their stories. We will continue to work on this skill throughout the year. Here, the students are peer revising their stories: Questions to ask your child: *What is your story about? *Can you give me an example of one revision you made to your story? SOCIAL STUDIES We have finished studying Ohio's prehistoric indians and took a quiz on important vocabulary about these Native Americans. Our field trip to SunWatch was awesome! Seeing the reproductions of the Fort Ancient homes really brought our learning to life, as did playing the game that the indian boys would have played. The movie and museum exhibits added to our understanding. SunWatch is an historic treasure and we are lucky to have it so close to home! Enjoy the pictures! Questions to ask your child: *Tell me 3 facts you learned about life at SunWatch Village. *What was the purpose of the spear throwing game? Who would have played it? What was it called? *What was your favorite thing about the field trip? Quarter 1 is in the books! We have wondered, discovered, explored, made mistakes, problem solved, made friends, read and re-read, written creatively, written technically, and made messes. We have organized, helped others, laughed, and learned lots and lots and lots and lots of passwords. We have painted, hiked, dug through pond sludge, hunted fossils, and watched a chilling documentary about sinkholes. We have modeled, multiplied, rounded, and measured. We have talked, and shared, and reflected. And we have listened. We have cheered each other on, and said we were sorry. And we ran a mile to be inspired to keep working hard when we are faced with obstacles and difficult circumstances. We are becoming who we are meant to be. And learning what we need to learn to make our world a better place. We have so much more to do, so BRING ON QUARTER 2! CONFERENCE WRAP-UPThe TOOLS WE USE...The little people are so excited about their Google accounts and our Google Classrooms! After setting up accounts and changing passwords, they began exploring the space and addressing their very first assignment: Quarter 1 Self Reflection. I am thrilled with the thoughtful and reflective responses I am seeing from students. They have been so honest and forthcoming about their strengths and areas they need to work on. My feedback comes by the way of comments in the margin of the doc. Please have your child show you how he/she logs in, responds to questions, and completes assignments. Have your child share the Self Reflection with you. I think it is a nice piece to accompany the grade card and is a good discussion piece for you and your child. THINK CENTRALI had a lot of questions about how parents can help their children at home with math. The online piece (THINK CENTRAL) to our Go Math! program has three tools I would like to highlight. Click the button below for a one minute video clip about how Think Central can be a useful tool for supporting your child's math learning at home. THE PLACE PROJECT:CENTENNIAL PARKFourth graders are conducting a year long study of Houk Stream at Centennial Park. Learners are working in teams to collect data, observe changes over time, make predictions, conduct tests, and communicate their results. Our initial information collection this past week will inspire questions we will use to guide our learning this year. Enjoy the photos of teams working together. Stay tuned for details about this project as it unfolds. THANK YOU Oakwood Schools Foundation for supporting The Place Project! We are so excited to have the tools we need to do our important work! 4W...4K...It was definitely the highlight of the week, so I'll start with the Fun Run! It was a great way to end a long week of testing and upended routines. The excitement was palpable from the moment the kids arrived in the building, and it culminated in a great event that brought all the elementary students of Oakwood together to hear an inspirational speech by an incredible young woman...Grace Norman. SOCIAL STUDIES We have delved into the prehistoric indians of Ohio. The Paleo, Archaic, Hopewell, and Adena are some of these groups. We've studied how and when they arrived in North America, what their food sources were, and whether they were gardeners or farmers as well as hunter-gatherers. Mound building is an interesting concept to the students, and many of these groups were Mound Builders. Information for the Field Trip Project can now be found on top of the Social Studies page of this blog. ELA Reading Students have finished reading myths in small groups and are now practicing myth reader's theater, either Pandora's Box or King Midas. We are discussing language that comes from these myths that we use today, and will be introduced to a few more myths as a whole group. Your children have heard about "opening Pandora's box", a "hurculean task", a "sisyphean task", arachnids, the "Midas Touch", echo, and narcissist. More to come! Writing The kids could not have been more excited when I told them, "Okay, it's time to WRITE!" We've had to work our way through some important pre-writing lessons to get us ready for writing our fictional narratives, and they were just chomping at the bit to start writing! So, after exploring leads and trying out a few of our own, we got down to it! We will continue to work on writing our rough drafts, then learn about editing and revising before completing this piece of writing. Spelling I wanted to make sure everyone is clear about our spelling procedures in 4th grade. Students are in small groups that meet on a certain day of the week. On the first day, students receive their word sort and sort the words with the teacher. On this day, your child should be bringing his/her sort home. It will look something like this (in terms of format)... Your child should practice sorting AND spelling these words at home. We will practice with various activities throughout the week at school as well. The following week, on your child's group day, a test will be given. We will then spend the next week working on vocabulary activities, which will be a week off in terms of spelling. Saturdays and Teacakes Our mentor text this week, Saturdays and Teacakes, is a beautifully written memoir about a young boy in the early 1960s spending his Saturdays with his mammaw. The language is so incredibly descriptive, and the paintings are so lifelike. The children and I LOVED this book, and I hope it inspires the children to try to write like the author. It would be tons of fun for the kids to try these teacakes. If you'd like to bake them, the recipe can be found at:
http://peachtree-online.com/teacakes.htm Field Work Follow UpUpon returning from our trip to Caesar's Creek, we had a lot of important thinking to document. Students reflected on their experiences independently and with their peers. New learning, observations, inferences, and questions were captured in their notebooks. Fossils were carefully examined, identified, sketched, and photographed. We will return to our field notes when we move into our life science studies later this year. EARTH SCIENCE INQUIRY KICK OFF!
MULTIPLICATIONIn math, we are well into our second chapter and are investigating strategies for multiplying 2-, 3-, and 4-digit numbers by the numbers 2–9. Our focus for several days was looking at comparison problems and how to problem solve using bar models. One tool we used was Thinking Blocks. This interactive is great for practice and gives learners feedback throughout the problem solving process. Click here to take a look at this tool: FACT FLUENCYReflex Math is the program we will be using to help students grow in their math fact fluency. It is assigned in class twice a week and for homework twice a week. This program is overwhelmingly loved by students and has proven to be effective. Timed fact tests will no longer be given in class. Please look for a report showing your child's progress with fact fluency to come home with his/her report card at the end of the quarter. This report will be in lieu of fact fluency progress being reported on the report card. Curious to learn more about Reflex Math? Click here: MATH AND A GROWTH MINDSETMath offers endless opportunities to practice grit and perseverance. This is exciting! However, for some learners who expect to arrive at correct answers quickly and easily, math can be frustrating. Listening and responding to how children talk about themselves and their abilities is as large a part of my interaction with them as the curricular instruction. My message to all learners is this: Learning is sometimes uncomfortable. Struggle does not indicate a final judgment of your ability. Struggle lets us know that we have something to learn. Working hard to gain understanding, learn a skill, or apply a strategy is expected. All learners should be working hard. The goal of learning is GROWTH. Thank you for helping your child see the value of effort and hard work. Thank you for helping your child to see evidence and patterns of growth. CODING
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AuthorAnne Kenney Archives
May 2016
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