Learning Updates 12/16/11

Dear Families,

Happy Holidays! I hope you enjoy a safe, fun, relaxing time with friends and family during this holiday break.

This week we finished our time in 2011 with another action packed week.Check out our all the great pieces students wrote, published and shared at our Author's Chair!

Below, please enjoy the pictures our class selected and captions that students wrote today during our writing time--they're now all accomplished Bloggers!

We celebrate our second Author's Chair by doing a toast and raising our cups of apple juice in the air.

Death. A dead fish lies on the ground, unconscious, with an upside down snail accompanying him. We're watching the decomposition process in one of our ecocolumns.

Author's Chair. This author presents his dramatic story while the class listens quietly.

Pushing buttons. Last Friday evening we had a special visitor after hours. William came to check out the classroom and our technology.

Math

• Reviewed and finished Unit 5, took the final test and an open response
• We'll start Unit 6 when we resume school in January

Reading

• Read a Time for Kids edition about the coolest inventions of 2011. Students wrote opinion journal entries about which invention was most important/why
• Learned about thinkmarks (like a bookmark, but tracks your thinking). Students practiced writing their thinking on sticky notes and placing those in the book. This will lead us to some deeper thinking/written reflection in the near future.
• Met with our 2nd grade reading buddies in Miss Evanger's class

 Science

• Finished our STC Ecosystems unit (the one with ecocolumns). Students analyzed/discussed the findings of their pollution experiments and extrapolated to what the effects might be on columns that actually contained animals
• Watched/discussed a short film and a written piece about Chesapeake Bay--a real ecosystem with pollution problems
• Took some end of unit ecosystems and engineering assessments

Writing

• Published personal narrative pieces from our second unit of writing in a picture book format (Read them all here)
• We held an author's chair and students shared their work with the class

Learning Updates 12/9/11

Happy Friday!

It's been another busy week, especially with all the great things we're trying to fit in just one week before winter break.

Market Day...
...was a huge success! Thank you for all your support at home in helping your child tackle this project. Also thanks to all the parents who assisted in setup, cleanup, making change, and helping out during Market Day. We couldn't have done it without you.

Check out lots more oil cleanup & Market Day pictures below:

Click HERE for Market Day and Science Pictures!

Math

• Worked on 2x2 and 3x2 digit multiplication with the partial products and lattice algorithms--ask your student to show you both
• Studied powers of 10 and rounding/reporting large numbers

Reading

• Discussed and wrote in our response journals about our histories as readers, and what things we've been thinking about lately as we read
• Reviewed our books finished logs and introduced a genre tracking graph

Science

• Planned oil containment/cleanup based on our hands on tests with each of nine potential materials. Students combined, altered, and changed the order in which to use these materials
• Conducted the cleanup, calculated scores, tried to improve designs/redesigned, and conducted a second cleanup/calculated new scores

Writing

• Talked about the editing process. Students finished drafts and began revising/editing
• Next week we'll conference and author's chair is coming soon

Learning Update 12.5.11

Dear Families,

It was wonderful meeting with all of you for parent conferences. I loved talking about the progress and growth your student has made, as well as the shared goals we have. Please know that you can always get in touch with me throughout the year to further discuss your child. Thank you for all of your help and support at home!

Here's a quick update:

In designing the solution, groups considered materials, how they might be combined or altered to work best, and the order in which to use them.

Principal Otley visited our classroom and read aloud to the class. We made some great connections between the story and the writing that we're doing in our personal narratives unit.

We watched the fourth and fifth grade chorus rehearsal. This was the Thriller dance!

 Math

• We've been working on a couple multiplication algorithms--partial products and today we reviewed the lattice multiplication method
• Remember to print out the parent letter that I send you each month. It has great background information, which allow you to best help your student. Plus, it makes checking your students' math homework each night very easy because all the answers are provided! Family letters are here.

Science

• We tested various materials for oil spill cleanup and containment
• We're working on the application part now where students formulate a plan and we test it out on a riverbed model containing oil

Writing

• We've made story mountains of our seed stories and are working on discovery rough drafts--ask your student to tell you their story (in story, not summary form)
• Next step on the way to publishing these pieces is revising

Reading

• Ask your student about the latest in our read aloud, Listening for Lions. Ask--What's the author's message so far?
• We've been analyzing picture book stories for story mountain/story arc structure and talking about how we can apply that to our writing

Important Dates
December 7........Market Day 9:30-10:30 Multipurpose Room
December 14.......Spirit PJ Day-Wear Your Pajamas to School
December 16......Classroom Auction
December 19-January 2.........Winter Break
January 16......Martin Luther King Jr. Day
January 31.......Planetarium (4th grade enrichment)