The best blog page ever...by Hannah and Cate

Welcome to our blog page by Cate and Hannah!!

In reading we switch. It is exciting because this is our first year we switched classrooms. It is also fun because we see other friends and what other teachers are like. It is so much fun!

In science we are talking about cells. We’re talking about animal cell and plant cells. A thing we learned is that a plant cells can help make its own food and an animal and human cells don’t. Plant can make their own food because they have chloroplasts. This week we will make our own cells. It is going to be very fun!

In social studies we are doing Jr. Atlas. But focusing on latitude and longitude.  Now we know were the equator and the prime meridian is on the map. Now we know what countries go through the equator and prime meridian.  Today we made our dough islands with our group!  It was AWESOME!

In math we are focusing on regrouping and ungrouping.  We are just about to be ready to finish the unit and start to switch. We are going to switch classes like we doing in reading. IT’S COOL!!

That is our blog page, hope you liked it!

Dough Recipe

Dough Recipe Homework: Due Thursday, September 26^th!!!

 

Dear Parents,

 

For social studies, the students are designing 3-D elevation maps. The 4th graders are working in cooperative groups to create islands made from dough which will include various landforms. The groups will paint their landforms to show different elevations. They will name their islands, label the island’s location with latitude and longitude, paint elevation levels, and decide the names and locations of their capital cities. This activity is a good review of all the landform skills the students are learning in 4th grade.

 

Each student will be making dough to use for this project and to share with their teammates.

 

Dough Recipe

                                                                                               

Ingredients:

 

 

1 cup of flour (At least!!! The dough should not be runny or stick to fingers, but thick enough to mold.  I would start with a cup, and add more as neededJ)

 

½ cup of salt

 

½ cup of water

 

***Helpful hints:  Use clean hands to mix the dough, and if the dough is too dry add a little water. If the dough is too runny, add a little more flour.

*** Extra ‘dough-nations’ would be appreciated and can be sent in a Ziploc Bag. 

Thank you!

Run A Thon Pictures!!!!

ABC Graffiti Pictures

Microscope pictures!

What's coming up!

Hi 4S, here's what we're currently working on and whats up ahead!!!

 

Reading: 

This week the children read Non Fiction books for our “Wow Week!”  The titles are brand new this year and included, “Extreme Places,” “Exploring Volcanoes,”  “Amazing Sharks,”  and “The Sticky Secret of Gecko Toes.”  To conclude the week, the children worked in groups to work on a creative comprehension activity called “ABC Graffiti.”  They had to come up with phrases that start with each letter of the alphabet that describe their article.  For example, if the article was on bats, they could write for the letter U:  Uses echolocation to help navigate.  It really requires the children to work together, summarize, comprehend and write phrases that pertain to their Non-Fiction book.  They shared their ABC Graffiti poster with the class and I’m putting them up for display in our 4^th grade hallway. 

Next week we will begin our reading flexible grouping.  We will each focus on three skills:  QAR questioning (we did this in 4S throughout our Extreme Sports Unit so they are familiar with this!), keeping track of your thinking (interacting with the text---questioning, connecting, predicting, reactions etc…the children will receive a guide to help them organize their thoughts) and vocabulary.  I’m excited for our children to experience learning from Mr. Jewell and Mrs. Fraser (if they don’t stay with me) and I know they are excited as well.  We’re looking forward to a great first “switch!”

Math:

We are finishing up subtraction with “ungrouping” this week.  This is basically the same as “regrouping.” The concept is the same; we just spend more time explaining why we need to “ungroup” and what it means to write a 10 or a 9 above the top rows of numbers.  Next week we will focus on relating addition and subtraction, subtracting greater numbers, and problem solving with greater numbers. We will have two days of review before the Unit 1 test.  We plan on testing the week of 9/30.  See your child’s assignment notebook for the exact date as it gets closer. Unit 2 focuses on multiplication.  We also started Fasttmath twice a week in the computer lab.  The other two days we will be focusing on typing skills.  We will start this next week.

Science:

We are learning about the similarities and differences between plant and animal cells.  Next week we will each make a cell using a Ziploc Bag, hair gel, and beans! Chapter 1 focuses on the classification of living things.

Social Studies:

We are currently learning about locating places on the map using latitude and longitude.  Next week we will review landforms and make our dough island. This is one of the children’s favorite activities of 4^th grade! A recipe will be sent home this Friday so your child can bring in dough the following Thursday 9/26 for their group’s island. Please refer to the letter on Friday for details.

We are also reading books and watching United Streaming Videos about the Revolutionary War for background knowledge.  In a little over a week we will start our very first research project about the Revolutionary War.  Each student will be responsible for researching a “famous” Revolutionary War man or woman. They will create a power point presentation, write a speech which they will give to our class, and from that speech write an expository paper about their person.  It will be a big project, but one that we are excited about starting.  I know the kids are excited about learning about the Revolutionary War just from the read alouds and short videos, and they are definitely excited about putting together a power point presentation!

Writing: 

The children came up with interview questions and have interviewed another student in our classroom.  This week they will work on developing a main idea for their paper and three general categories which fit their person (based off of their interview answers.)  We will be putting our main ideas and details into a graphic organizer and using that graphic organizer to help develop a five paragraph paper including an introduction paragraph, three body paragraphs and a conclusion paragraph.  Writing ahead will include persuasive, narrative and poetry.

Thank you for your Run-A-Thon donations!  The children did a wonderful job today!  Tons of effort!J

Please send in your $9.00 (cash only) for the subscription to National Geographic and for your child’s assignment notebook if you haven’t already.  The due date isn’t until 9/30.

Thank you,

Mrs. Schroeder

Sara and Bear's Blog

Writing

We are doing cursive this week we did w, u, I, and t for cursive. Cursive is fun because it’s like a whole different of writing things. Cursive is hard at the beginning but easy at the end. For cursive it’s faster print for our opinion.

 

Math

We learned different ways to add like groups below, groups above, left to right and right to left. Those methods helped a lot! We also finished rounding and we are starting estimating. Rounding helped us a lot. We started adding from the hundred thousand place .We took a lot mini quizzes and it wasn’t so easy on every quiz. We played a dice game it was really fun. We rolled three dice and looked at the dice and saw which numbers it is. Then we rolled again and added the numbers together.

P.E

This is a quick reminder think of your squad color and don’t forget it because play each other with our colors. We practice throwing, kicking, caching, and last but not least punting. We are warming up by jump roping and running laps. We should be able to jump 50 times in 30 seconds as 4^th graders. We did soccer with our squad colors we switch spots. When we switch we do a throwing test and a kicking test. On Friday the 13^th we played capture the flag with Mr.Jewls class.

Science

We took a test about a microscope test and we needed to name each part of the microscope. We took a science safety test and all of us got a good grade. We got some microscopes and looked at an onion sell. It looked really cool I didn’t even know that cells looked like that. I didn’t know that we do awesome labs like that in 4^th grade. 4^th grade has awesome labs.

Reading

We are reading celery stocks at midnight  it’s a very good book .we are doing a poster about realist fiction book its really fun we are making a giant post card we do a different project every month. We have buddies we are buddying with 1C. We did an extreme sports and we saw you tube video it was very cool because they did crazy stunts .they were really cool.

Events

It was sad on September 11 we weren’t born yet but are parent might remember  were they were at the time. Firefighters came to our school on September 11 2013 we had a parade at the school they walked the halls of our school. Chorus  is were you sing and dance and it starts on September 25 if your child didn’t get a sheet they are in the music room.

By Sara Agin and Bear Awadzi