MAKERS!Last Friday, we spent our time together making and creating. Students built circuits, created computer games, constructed with Knex, and crafted pieces of art. We listened to music and enjoyed using our hands, minds, and creative spirit. FRACTIONS ARE SUPER FUN!Learners have been exploring the strategies they can use to compare fractions, order fractions, and problem solve with fractions. Lots of great math talk has been happening! Ask your child to talk to you about what they have learned. Some vocabulary to get the conversation started: factor multiple equivalent fractions simplest form common denominator After Winter Break, we will begin adding and subtracting fractions. LOTS OF EXCITED ENERGY FOR CIRCUITS!Little Bits! Check out these awesome circuit building kits we have been using to uncover our understanding of how energy can cause change! CALLING ALL EXPERTS!Operation Hillside experts were a great help in our research journey this week! Mr. Diaspro answered our questions about playground safety, playground equipment, and shared his recommendations for how to address the hillside on the lower playground. Mrs. Wright fielded questions about local plants and animals. She is our expert naturalist and we are thrilled to have her assistance again! Thank you Mrs. Wright and Mr. Diaspro for giving your time to share with us and teach us! Teams continue to gather information, communicate their learning, and modify plans! Great work is happening!
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We had a blast with idioms on Friday! Students displayed the idioms they brought from home and walked around trying to figure out each other's idioms. How well can you do? Did you see... *it's raining cats and dogs? *toss your cookies? *Elvis has left the building? *you're nuts? *broken hearted? *cut to the chase? *make a long story short? OPINIONS, PLEASE... We began discussing opinion writing in class as well. Students are learning a framework for this type of writing called boxes and bullets. In this framework, the opinion (we call it a thesis) is placed in a box at the top of the page, and a bullet pointed list of reasons with evidence is written underneath. We began with a thesis MOST children shared the opinion of...I LOVE ICE CREAM. We worked together to "air write" the entire essay, and then children put the essay down on paper. Here they are "air writing" the essay (saying it aloud to a partner): QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT OUR RECENT SOCIAL STUDIES LESSONS:
*What were 2 positive outcomes of the Articles of Confederation? (treaty with Britain and the Northwest Ordinance) *What states were created out of the Northwest Territory? (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin) *What are the 3 steps for a territory to achieve statehood? (1-a governor, secretary and 3 judges are assigned; 2-once there are 5,000 free men, a legislature can be formed and 3--once there are 60,000 people, a state constitution needs to be written and approved) RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES We are reading about, writing about, and discussing the rights and responsibilities of being a US citizen. These discussions could go on for days, as the kids have so many wonderful questions about how our government works. I'm hoping their new learning and questions are making it home-they would make great dinner conversations! In reading, students were broken into 4 small groups to read stories that helped answer the question "What are the rights and responsibilities of being a US citizen?" Once the story was read and discussed with their group, students met with kids from other groups to hear about other stories and discuss how each story illustrated good citizenship. We then read a connecting passage that helped bring it all together. Ideas discussed included: serving in the military, jury duty, taking care of animals, peacefully protesting, and helping others being bullied. On Thursday, Jan. 14, we had a special treat. Representative Jim Butler came in and talked with the students about the structure of our government, how a bill becomes a law, and the ins and outs of his job. Then he took the students through an exercise where they proposed bills (that was fun!), voted on which they were most interested in, then voted on one to "become" a law. They chose to decrease the school year from October-April. Keep dreaming, kiddos... :) From there, we moved on to a study of the Bill of Rights. We were introduced to it through a short video, then delved into each of the first 10 amendments. Our focus is really on the 5 rights listed in the first amendment. Students were broken into small groups and asked to list those rights in order of importance to them. They then had to defend why they chose the right they chose as the first. It's a great process for the kids to go through and talk about what each right really means. Students were then asked to go home to discuss these rights with their families and to post on Google Classroom which one they thought was the most important. Here are some of their responses:
how do electric charges flow in a circuit?Learners in 4K and 4W worked with Snap Circuits this week! Our room was filled with flying fans, buzzers, music, and alarms. Ask your child to talk to you about his/her discoveries and new learning! HOW CAN WE GENERATE EQUIVALENT FRACTIONS?We have started our work with fractions! This is a big area of focus for our fourth grade learners. Our first chapter invites students to look at equivalent fractions and compare fractions. When we return from Winter Break, we will begin our work with adding and subtracting fractional parts.
Math EXPLORERS:QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AT HOME How can you find factors and multiples, and how can you generate and describe number patterns? How can you use models or lists to find factors? How can you create a number pattern? DESIGN CHALLENGE:Build a mountain that can with stand the effects of water being poured on it. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AT HOME Tell me about the materials you used. How did you measure or determine the amount of run-off? What changes did you make to your original design and materials when you were given other opportunities to build? How will you use what you learned during this experience in your Operation Hillside project? OPERATION HILLSIDEQUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AT HOME:
Tell me about The Hunter and the Philosopher.... What were your big take-aways? How will this help you with solving the problem? Show me your group's Google Slides Notebook for your project work! What experts are you hoping to interview, and what information are you hoping to learn from them? I hope everyone had a great winter break and will have a fabulous 2016! It is the beginning of the second semester of fourth grade...do you believe it?! We have much to look forward to in this second half, so let's get to it! We started our time back together by reflecting on what we'd like to achieve in 2016, and what we are looking forward to. Students filled out a large 2016 and thought about: 2 things they'd like to accomplish in 2016, how they would ZERO-in on those things, 1 thing they'd like to improve on, and 6 things they are looking forward to in the new year. These are hanging in each student's personal bulletin board in the hall. English Language Arts We jumped back in full force with our focus on non-fiction text. Students are learning about the various structures that writers use when writing non-fiction pieces. We will apply our knowledge about these structures when reading AND writing. To begin with, students are reading samples of writing written in each type of structure and filling out a corresponding graphic organizer to help them see the parts and how they work together. We have written and will continue to write various pieces using these text structures. We also began our study of figurative language. Similes and metaphors are the first types we learned about. The kids are enjoying trying to understand what some of them really mean! We watched a couple of fun videos to help cement our learning. Links to these can be found on my ELA page. Our mentor texts for the next couple of weeks will add to our understanding of figurative language and how it can be used to create a picture in the reader's mind. Next week's text is a beautiful story about a little blind boy who has to "see" using his other senses. There is some beautiful use of similes to help the reader "see" as well. Social Studies
We started back with a review of the levels of government: local, state, and federal, then spent the rest of the week immersing ourselves in understanding the branches of government as laid out in our Constitution. Students read about, discussed, played games, and watched videos, all to help them understand this very important system. Links to some games can be found on my SS webpage in case you're interested in brushing up on your knowledge! Our discussions are especially interesting in this big election year, as many of the students are tuned in to the upcoming presidential election. We will also get a first hand account of the state system when Representative Jim Butler comes and shares his knowledge with us next week. In the pics below, the students are playing 4 Corners to help review for our quiz. HOur of Code
PLACE PROJECT Stream Study and POETRYStudents worked in teams to take data and observations collected at Centennial Park, and report their findings using art and data tables. Through this process, comparisons were made, questions were asked, and new predictions were made. Learners published the poetry they composed during our last excursion! Below is just a taste of the beautiful writing done by Team 4K and Team 4W...stop by the 4th grade hallway to enjoy them all! DIVISION Learners have been focused on division and problem solving. Estimating, interpreting remainders, and solving division problems through regrouping have been things we practice daily!
OPERATION HILLSIDETeams were busy with Operation Hillside this week! Students developed questions and interviewed Mrs. Patterson in hopes to gain more clarification about the parameters for our hillside project. Thank you, Mrs. Patterson, for your time, support, and feedback! Measuring the area of the hillside was part of our information gathering this week as well! Because communication is an important component to teamwork, we played a game called Observer, Communicator, Artist Each team of 3/4 is charged with replicating a picture as accurately as possible in the time allowed. The observer is the only person on the team who may see the picture. He/she may only talk to the communicator. The communicator may carry information back and forth between the observer and artist, but may not see the picture, and may not draw on the paper. The artist must draw what he/she is told, exactly. Finally, teams worked together on Friday to bring all of their big ideas into focus. Preliminary drafts are in the works!
We are steeped in American History here in our Social Studies classes! TAXATION ROLE PLAY One of the causes of the American Revolution was the fact that England was taxing the colonies without them having any say in it. "NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION" was a common cry in the 1770s in the colonies. To help the children understand how the colonists felt, we role played having to pay taxes to England... Of course we had to have a King! And members of Parliament! The tax collectors read aloud which of the new tax acts they were enacting (Stamp Act, Sugar Act or Townshend Act) and how many Skittles each colonist had to pay. As they paid more and more taxes, the colonists got angrier and angrier. One group even refused to pay their taxes...they lost ALL their Skittles and ended up in jail! This activity really helped the students understand how the colonists felt when they didn't have any say in how their money was being used. MUSEUM IN A BOXAnother activity that really helped bring social studies to life was the Museum in a Box activity. These are boxes are artifacts or replicas sent from Ohio History Connection in Columbus. We had 2 boxes to look at...Pioneer Life and Tribes of the Ohio River Valley. This was a fantastic, hands-on way for children to see, feel, touch, and, yes, even SMELL, how these people in our state's history lived. Here are some of the items we got to pass around. THANK YOU HARMAN PTO FOR FUNDING THE MUSEUM IN A BOX GRANT! READER'S THEATER Students LOVE presenting reader's theater! This time we had scripts for The Boston Massacre and The Boston Tea Party. What a great way to really understand these two events that played an important event in leading to the Revolution. MENTOR TEXTS
Our mentor texts for the past weeks also focused on the American Revolution. The Scarlet Stockings Spy was from the viewpoint of a young girl who spied for the Patriots, Katie's Trunk told of a Loyalist girl and how the war impacted relations with her neighbors. It was great to get perspectives from both sides. CHASING QUESTIONS |
"Many things inspired me its hard to pick one, but I will have to pick when we went to Mrs. Parkers room and looked through the books. Thats when my group thoroughly discussed what we thought we could do. I can't wait for next time we work on this MEGA AWESOME project!" "Well today I was mostly inspired when I saw a picture of a peninsula that was cliff like on all edges and had trees sticking up on the top. This inspired me to have something including trees and a rock climbing wall. So the tree idea went into little wrap around porches on the top of the trees with slides going down and, the rock climbing wall could go up onto a tree's balcony." | "The books and quotes inspired me by giving me information about nature and giving me ideas of what to do to the hillside. The slideshow inspired me by also giving me ideas of what to do to the hillside. When we went outside also gave me inspiration by telling me what the hillside looks like now." "Everything inspired me today! In Mrs.Walther's class it was fun to see the different stations. In Mr.Edward's I liked to look at ways to add to the hillside. In Mrs.Kenney's class I liked see all the quotes.In Mrs.Parker's class I loved reading the books." "I got inspired when my team all got together and started brain storming.Then we all came up of the best hillside discussion ever!" | "What inspired me the most about operation hillside today was the idea of having a deck on the hill because it gave me an idea about adding chairs and lots of plants. I think kids would like it there because it would be pretty up there and would have a view of the whole lower playground. I think it would be a great idea because if the kids like it, it's likely they won't hurt it. Also the deck would be a nice place because there would be a fence around it that could keep deer out and other pests so the nice plants won't be eaten. The people would like it I think because if somebody is stressed being there would be peaceful and relaxed. So now I think it'll all help us to "Go Outside"." |
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Anne Kenney
Kimberly Walther
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