Learning Updates

We had a great week packed with learning!

A major highlight for the class was Market Day. It was a great success! Thank you for all your support at home in preparing for this experience! Click here to view some great photos of Market Day. Thanks to Michelle Enebo for taking/sharing these!

Students observe the effects of water flow on different stream bed models. We wanted to know in which model would water have the greatest impact on the land--low water flow, high water flow, or high water flow with an incline. Ask your student what we found.

High flow stream with incline. Ask your student how this model compared with the other two we studied. Also, did water change as it interacted with the land? If so, how did it change in each of the three models? In which model did water carry the biggest/heaviest particles?

Science

• Did two other experiements
• One we looked at the absorbancy of different types of soil. Ask your student which was most/least absorbant.
• 2nd experiment we looked at whether sprinkling a liter of water over a landscape model (like rain) would have an impact on the landscape and whether the water would change after interacting with the land

Math

• Learned about/practiced doing extended multiplication facts
• ie 60 * 40
• Do 6 * 4 = 24, then add the two 0s from the factors --> 2,400
• Took Unit 4 Open Response

Writing

• Everyone revised/edited their personal narratives, had revising/editing conferences with Mr. Herzberg
• Finished clean copies of stories
• Typing up stories over the weekend
• Students will insert .jpg scanned image of their illustration in their typed piece early this next week
• Pieces will be published online on our blog!

Reading

• Students read and became experts on a specific type of erosion
• Mrs. Otley (our principal) came to read a story to us--ask your child what the theme was, and the lesson of the story
• Miss Jane (our counselor) finished part 2 of her point of view lesson with the class & related point of view to the work we do as writers--ask your student about this connection

Market Day

Today we had our first Market Day. Think back and reflect. Please answer these two questions: What did you learn from the experience today? What will you do differently next time? Please write your answer to each question as a separate paragraph. Try to stretch your stamina and write in depth. Elaborate with good details and examples.

Learning Updates

Dear Families,

It was great meeting with so many of you to talk about your child's progress during parent conferences last week. Thank you for all that you do to support your child's learning at home!

Here's what we've been up to, even before our snow days:

Math

• Finished Unit 4, focused on decimals
• Took test on Friday
• We'll take the Open Response separately sometime mid-next week
• Parent letter for Unit 5 available here. These are a great resource!
• Starting Unit 5 Monday--Big numbers, estimation & computation

Reading

• We've been building our stamina again with read to self and read to someone
• Ask your student about building stamina and these two Daily 5 choices
• When does it make sense to back up and reread?
• How can readers activate their prior knowledge? Why would that be important to do as a reader?
• Started a new read aloud Where the Red Fern Grows, one of my all time favorites
• How has Billy Coleman shown great determination so far?

Writing

• Discussed story arcs, the pattern most narratives follow in some way where life starts out good, then there's some sort of problem or tension that builds. There's a climax or turning point, followed by a resolution and a sense that life is good again.
• Students made their own for their seed story
• It was powerful because they could quickly re-envision their story in a different way
• This has been helpful as a revision tool for their seed stories
• Revisited elements of powerful endings and that they should relate back to heart of the story
• Students are now in the process of revising, editing, and publishing this second round of personal narratives

Science

• Examined and classified pictures of erosion
• Focused on one picture within table groups--made an observation, asked a question about it and made a prediction about the question
• Learned about underground erosion and caves
• Did a water cycle reader's theatre where each student had a script and part.
• Ask what part your child played. What did they learn?
• Learned about the water cycle with a guest teacher--Miss Cowgill
• Built an actual water cycle model--ask your student about this
• Did two hands on investigations
• Of humus, clay, sand, rocky soil--which had the biggest organic and which had the biggest inorganic particles?
• After shaking up these four soils in a graduated cylinder--which was heaviest (settled on the bottom)? What was the order they settled? (Gravel, sand, clay, humus floating on top)

Art Docent

• Thanks to Leigh Karvasek and Lynne Varner who did a great Art Docent Lesson on Rousseau and his use of foreground, middle ground and background.

Enrichment. Kate Poaster worked with our class on water ecology. We had some great ties with our studies of ecosystems and land & water

Ask your student to explain Kate's sketch.

Students perform lab tests on water samples. They had to match the color to determine things like PH.

Recording data on their lab sheets 

Water Cycle reader's theatre

Guest teacher Miss Cowgill taught the class about the water cycle

Market Day prototypes. Students shared prototypes with the class and I called on a few students to say what they'd be willing to spend on the item. This helped with getting a sense for pricing.

Point of View. Our counselor, Miss Jane had students taking different points of view in the classroom. We'll have the second part of the lesson this Friday.

Ask your student what they had to do with the pictures of our room that they were given. What was challenging about this? What strategies did they use to figure it out?

Learning Updates

Last call on our classroom communication survey. Thanks to all who have participated. It's very quick to complete and your feedback is appreciated. Click here for the survey

Here's what we've been up to the past week:

Reading

• Finished reading our novel study of Owl in the Shower
• Focused on the skill of using context clues. Test your student's skill when you come across an unfamiliar word. See if they can supply a reasonable guess of a word or phrase that could be plugged into that sentence for it to make sense
• Talked about how often it can take upwards of 60 in-context exposures of a new word before it's cemented in your brain
• Students took the Owl in the Shower test
• Started a new read aloud, (One of my favorites), Where the Red Fern Grows
• Ask what the book has been about so far. What does the main character want more than anything? What are some ways the author shows us he wants this so badly?

Writing

• Focused again on developing great leads, and practiced the strategy of looking to published authors for examples in books of our own
• Mr. Herzberg directed a "great writing" symphony. Ask your child how this worked.
• Learned about how great writers maintain the point of view with them telling the story from inside the skin of the main character (which is normally your child at a different time/place in their life)
• I told a story about a bike crash. I paused every few lines and students gave me a thumbs up if I maintained the point of view and thumbs down if I lost it
• You might have your child verbally tell their seed story to you. Have them stop in places and you can give thumbs up/down. See if they can demonstrate briefly losing the point of view

Math

• Continued our work with decimals
• Ordering decimals, rounding decimals, comparing decimals with base 10 blocks, understanding real-life applications when we use decimals, adding/subtracting after rounding decimals
• These are all things we've focused on in the past week
• Students reviewed their Unit 3 test. I'll hang on to it for report cards and share it with you during parent conferences
• Ask about the two new games we played: Product Pile Up, and Decimal Top It--how do you play? What's the point?

Science

• Returned ecosystems, web of life, and glog assessments to students. We discussed them and students brought them home
• Revisited and revised our list of what thought we knew and what wanted to learn about ecosystems
• Started our new unit on Land & Water
• Watched a film on erosion
• Took a water cycle pre-assessment
• Interacted with images of land and water--making observations and asking questions

Writing fast and long. Students began writing their seed story, starting with a lead outside their writers notebooks. We're getting close to publishing again! 

Story Plan. I asked students to write on a notecard the topic of their seed story. This could be a story they've already started or a new one they want to write. Next was the tricky part--what are you trying to say, or show through the piece? We've been talking about how what you're trying to say will drastically impact how you write about an event.

Friday we had a whole school assembly in honor of our Veterans. One representative from each fourth grade class read a piece they wrote about freedom. There was a flag ceremony led by Cub Scouts, singing, reading, and sharing about the history of Veteran's Day.

Learning Updates

Mountains to Sound Greenway in class enrichment session about the real life choices we face with how we manage our forests.

In small groups students were assigned a particular interest to represent. They had to brainstorm the pros/cons of their approach and give a short presentation to the group. Some interests were developers, lumber companies, low impact recreation, etc.

Web of Life. Students researched a particular organism of the forest at home. At school we started with a producer (plant) and traced the web of life between every organism, finally ending back with the original plant. Students could pass the ball of yarn to another organism who they eat/they depend on, or who eats them/depends on them. 

Ask your student which is more stable--a system like our food web with many parts or a system like a food chain with few parts.

Math

• Finished Unit 3 and took the test
• On Friday we started Unit 4 and began exploring how decimal place value works
• Ask your student how they programmed their calculator to skip count. Why did we do this?
• Also, how does the game Polygon Pair Up work? What's the point of the game?

Science

• Finished Ecosystems unit and took the final test
• Did a Jeopardy review of the unit, and a vocabulary word cloze (fill in the blank) they could take home to study
• Conducted our Web of Life (see above pictures) and wrote about the experience
• Explored a food chain flipchart. Ask your student how we used the Activote Technology to review our learning.

Reading

• Read and discussed a number of chapters from our novel study, Owl in the Shower
• Held a debate between the two interests identified in the book--the loggers & the environmentalists
• Ask your student what's been happening lately in Owl in the Shower. How has Leon changed through the story? How does the book tie in to our study of Ecosystems?

Writing

• Students are drafting new small moments personal narrative stories
• We're building upon all the skills they've learned so far
• Ask your child to explain what a turning point is. How can turning points help you figure out what to write? How does someone listening to you tell your story help you with writing that story? How can your family help with this process?

Book Bingo

• Ask about the school-wide book bingo our class participated in. How did it work?

Learning Updates (Pictures/Captions Format)

Are Vacant Lots Vacant? Ask your student about this inquiry science lab we did today in the vacant lot above the Grand Ridge parking lot. What biotic and abiotic factors did they observe? What elements there supported plants and animals? What would happen if one of those elements were taken away?

One of the creatures we observed in the vacant lot--a Mantis!

Athena the Barred owl from West Sound Wildlife shelter paid a visit to 4th graders. Ask your student what they learned about owls. How did her visit tie in to what we've been studying about ecosystems? Be sure to check out the comment your student wrote in response to the blog question below.

Students dissected barn owl pellets during our Owloween on Thursday. We studied two different questions by examining the bones. First: what do barn owls predominantly eat--rodents, insectivores, or birds? Second, we measured the length of the femur bones contained in owl pellets. From there we did a mathematical calculation to approximate overall body size of the prey so we could answer this question: what is the average size of prey that a barn owl eats? Be sure to ask your child for the answers.

Students laid out the bones they found in the owl pellets on paper towels. This group labeled the different bones they found.

We began our new unit in writing, focused again on personal narratives, but on expanding, deepening, and improving their quality. We've created a couple new charts to help us generate great ideas for what to write about. Have your student explain these to you.

Please check our class photos tab for more photos from Owloween of Athena the Owl and our owl pellet dissection.

Athena the Barred Owl

Today, a West Sound Wildlife Shelter presenter and their ambassador, Athena, visited our classroom. During the presentation you learned many interesting Barred Owl facts. You learned about its habitat, hunting habits, and unique characteristics. Tonight, please respond to at least 3 of the 6 questions below. Make sure you use complete sentences and correct conventions. Don't forget to put your first name only at the bottom of your comment before your post.

1. What are 2 unique characteristics of Barred owls that make them good hunters?

2. What type of habitat do Barred owls need?

3. What animals are part of a Barred owls diet?

4. How does this diet compare to that of Spotted Owls?

5. What is a crop and how is it used?

6. What are 2 other interesting things you learned today in our presentation?