Learning Updates 4.27.12

Dear Families,

We had another great week together as we nearly brought the month of April to a close. Read on through the captions to find out why students just could not stop saying the word "fun" this past week. Remember, you can click on a picture to view it at full-size.

Students could hardly contain their excitement with the mirrors we've been using in math to reflect and "move" objects on the page!

"This is fun!" was a very common phrase across the week during math :)

Art Docent lesson on transformations--reflections (flips), rotations (spins), and translations (slides). Perfect timing! Same day, in fact, as when we began to study the same content in math. Thanks to our Art Docent, Lisa Purdon, for another great lesson!

Students created a base shape--ask them how. This was a very interesting set of steps. Then they decided what the "rhythm" or pattern would be--flips? slides? or turns?--across the page. Students performed the transformation, then traced in pencil, then over in sharpie marker, and finally adding color with crayons.

Trade Simulation! 4th grade students participated in a simultaneous trade simulation as part of our Pacific Rim Trade unit in Social Studies.  Our class had 5 groups, each trying to build a car. Other classrooms tried to "build" airplanes, computers, and homes. Groups started out with some of the required inventory, but also had to do a fair amount of trading within and between classrooms.

Let's make a deal! Students in our class met with trade representatives from other classes to trade inventory.

Keeping very careful track on the in-class and traveling trade representatives' inventory sheets was very important!

Finished Art Docent projects. Also, our essays are finally up on the wall! :)

Mirror mirror. Partners had to mirror a series of moves made by one another during math class in order to model the concept of reflection.

Reading

• Continued studying the concept of theme in reading
• Looked at the song lyrics of "Yellow Taxi" to analyze theme. I didn't tell students at first that it was a song, so they were surprised when I played it for them. We compared the difference in rhyme and meter between the two forms
• Students looked at a poem by Shel Silverstein called Smart, analyzed theme and responded to their reading

Writing

• We're so close to wrapping the fictional narrative unit. Students have been working so hard to publish their picture books. 
• Author's chair is soon to follow!

Social Studies

• Wrapped up our Pacific Rim trade unit with a couple quizzes
• We'll quickly cover some Washington State Government information and then move back to Science

Math

• Started Unit 10, and if you haven't read the captions for the above pictures--students love it!

Learning Updates 4.20.12

We had a great week back from Spring Break, filled with lots of learning. Here's a bit of what we've been up to:

Math

• Finished Unit 9 and worked on the unit math review in class on Friday
• Unit 9 test on Monday--as we wrote in their planners, students should study for the test over the weekend

Reading

• Worked on the reading skill of comparing/contrasting using two different photos. We did some whole class and teacher modeling, and then students tried it independently on a new set of photos. Students made some great inferences and conclusions about the similarities and differences they saw
• Started to talk about theme (the lesson or author's message)--we'll do more with this next week

Writing

• We're going in to publishing mode! Many students finished their rough drafts of their realistic fiction stories and conferenced with me. We'll do more conferences the beginning of this week and get everyone publishing their picture books. Very exciting!

Social Studies

• Delved deeper in our Pacific Rim Trade unit. Learned about Fair Trade through a story called Zapizapu. Ask your student to tell you about this. Specifically, what drink from our lives does Zapizapu represent and what is some evidence from the story to support this?
• Students met in small expert groups and read about one of five different Pacific Rim countries. They highlighted, mind mapped the information, and planned a presentation for the class, plus worked a bit on a visual aid poster. Groups presented their information on Friday to the class and we all took notes.

Expert Groups. Students read and highlighted information about their Pacific Rim Country.

Learning Updates 4.6.12

Wherever Spring Break finds you I hope you have a safe, fun and relaxing time with friends and family.

Here's a super quick update from this week:

Researching and taking notes on the Pacific Rim and its connection to trade and Washington State.

Proud published authors. Fourth graders shared their published essays and second graders shared their published realistic fiction pieces. It was fun for us to compare our current work in that genre to that of our second grade buddies.

Social Studies

• Started Pacific Rim unit, learned that Pacific Rim is ring of countries around outside of Pacific Ocean that engage in trade with one another
• Students read and took research notes on the topic

Math

• Working a great deal with percentages--calculating them from fractions both mentally and on the calculator
• Solved story problems and made sense of survey data by converting between fractions, decimals and percents

Reading

• Met with our second grade reading buddies--we each shared published writing pieces
• Working to make inferences from short mystery stories involving a fictional crime--students focused on the background knowledge and text clues that led them to that inference

Writing

• Continuing to make progress on our realistic fiction stories. Talked about grounding our characters in a setting rather than having them floating in space, worked on writing 2-3 potential endings, talked about how we only revise our best work--the work we care about and that revising is "re-seeing" possibilities, and reviewed charts/lesson topics from earlier in the year in the hope that students will call on these earlier learning in their writing now. Not bad for one week!