February Update!

Hi Everyone!  We are finishing February on a productive note.  I enjoyed seeing the work that has been submitted so far on Family Playlists.  Thank You Room 12 parents for your patience and willingness to take part in this pilot program.

In Reading we are currently studying text structures (cause-effect, description, problem-solution, sequence, compare/contrast) and learning how to write summaries of texts that use these structures. Our work in writing continues to be our Canada/Mexico research projects.  Many students are close to completing their rough drafts and will soon be able to begin to edit and publish their work. Publishing will be done through a student choice of website, book creator, brochure or poster.

In Math we completed Topic 6 which is a unit on problem solving and Topic 8 on equivalent fractions. Each day during the Solve and Share portion of our math lesson groups get a chance to draw their thinking out on a white board and share it with the rest of the class.  I am pleased with the math discussions coming out of these experiences.

We completed our Science unit on Energy and are now studying the regions of the United States.  We are currently working on the Northeast Region of our country. Our studies take us to different stops around the Northeast.  Below is a picture of students working on an assembly line in Hershey, Pennsylvania. One student is the wrapper cutter, the next in line is the candy placer, and the last student in line is the candy wrapper.

Bridges- Ethnicities, Heirlooms and Traditions!

January Update!

Happy 2019 Everyone!

Our New Year kicked off with the beginning of our Bridges program on Thursday, January 3rd.  The Bridges program is outlined in detail in a letter I sent home in late December.  Our first activity was to create Bridge Posters that show what each group of children has in common with their senior volunteer. Below is a picture of our first class.  Students are sharing what they have in common with each other and their senior volunteers.  Bridges occurs once a week for six weeks.  Our second class focused on Schools Then and Now.  Students gave their volunteers tours of the school and volunteers shared stories about what schools were like when they were children.  The children asked many thoughtful questions about what classrooms looked like and if they had technology back then.  This Thursday's class will focus on family traditions.

In math we are learning how to divide by 1 digit numbers.  An important concept is understanding how multiplication and division are related.  Children also need to understand what remainders are and how remainders factor into answers to division word problems.

The fourth grade has begun our Informational Writing Unit on Canada/Mexico.  Over the course of last week and this week each homeroom is being taught four specific research strategies (one by each fourth grade teacher).  After learning the four research strategies children return to their homerooms to complete their research and write their reports on either Canada or Mexico.

In reading we answered an essential question on the book Orphan of Ellis Island using two column notes.  "How does Dominic Cantori change from the beginning of the story?" The children answered this question in three paragraph essays using their two column notes as a guide.

In science we began a unit on Energy.  Our work focuses on understanding the energy story.  How is energy transferred and transformed as it moves from one object to the next? We just had an exciting class discovering how to fill a capacitor with electrical energy and using it to make a propeller spin!