Learning Updates

Dear Families,

Thanks for a great 2010. I look forward to all the work ahead with your students and you in 2011.

We've had a very busy final week of school before the break. Here are a few highlights:

Science/Social Studies

• We finished our studies of the different types of water erosion
• Students took two separate land & water assessments
• Began studying Lewis & Clark, within the context of exploration
• Steve Taylor made an entertaining, humorous, and educational presentation about Lewis & Clark. Thank you for your support in making this enrichment activity possible!

Steve Taylor's Lewis & Clark presentation involved talking puppets, magic, jokes, and audience participation!

 Math

• Learned a new algorithm (partial products) that is helpful conceptually in developing your child's understanding of the place value that occurs in multiplication
• Combines our work lately with a game called multiplication wrestling with extended multiplication facts, and estimating with large numbers--ask your child to explain these three things and how they connect in the partial products algorithm
• Will learn lattice algorithm for multiplication method Friday--this one is a favorite of students!

Writing

• Students typed their clean copies & brought to school on USB stick or emailed them
• I scanned their images in, & students imported/compressed them in MS Word
• They saved the files as PDFs for our blog
• We had an Author Chair Celebration--see separate post below!

Reading

• Read Leah's Pony--a story about the dust bowl of the 1930s. Ask your student how the story connected with our land/water studies
• Read about exploration broadly, and then more specifically with regard to Lewis & Clark, and exploration of Washington State
• Mrs. Lederman read a story to our class
• Started Mountain Language word work program
• Read Aloud--Where the Red Fern Grows--we made some more progress. Ask your student what Billy's great challenge has been lately. How does the author stretch small moments? 

Choir Concert. Choir students performed some great jazz numbers on Thursday!

Author's Chair 12/15

Our second Author's Chair Celebration was a great success! We started by having a couple students share their small moments personal narrative pieces with the whole class. Ask your student what we did instead of applauding after each piece. Then students broke in to four smaller groups around the room and the sharing continued. We had some treats and a toast to all our hard work with some bubbly apple cider. Finally, students put their pieces on their desks and went to sit at others' desks. They quietly read through other students' stories and provided positive feedback on notecards. We even had a couple visitors--our Principal, Mrs. Otley and Program Assistant, Mrs. Lederman.

Click to view all of the students' stories electronically!

View pictures of the author's chair event. Thanks very much to Michelle Enebo for taking these great shots and sharing them with us!

Lewis & Clark

This morning we were visited by Steve Taylor and his friends Rudy (Sacagawea) and Rocky. Thank you parents for this terrific enrichment learning opportunity. We loved it!


In your blog post, please respond to the following questions.

1. What were two of the challenges that Lewis and Clark faced on their journey?
2. How do we know so much about a journey that occurred over 200 years ago?
3. Name 2-3 ways that Sacagawea helped Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery.
4. What was you favorite part of the presentation? Why?

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.