A Big Bite

Here are all of our speeches! Great job everyone!

A Big Bite

Here are some photos from the last two days.  We had a visit from Tom and Jamie, Vet techs here in Franklin and they helped us learn about pet care and the responsibilities of owning a pet.  It was a great connection to Little Dog, Lost, our interactive read aloud.  In addition, we completed several curriculum activities with a Thanksgiving theme. All of the students gave their first speech of the year and those videos will be posted soon.  Have a great Thanksgiving and I will see everyone on Monday.

A Big Bite

So much has happened in the last two weeks, where do we begin?  We finished our unit on multiplication and took the online test; everyone did a great job!  We will begin division after the Thanksgiving break.  We finished our unit on Mexico and will start learning about Canada soon.  The Haffenreffer Museum, from Brown University, visited all of the 4th graders.  We participated in a great archeology program and learned what it is like to be an archaeologist.  The museum will be back three more times this year as we study different Native American tribes of the US.  Thanks so much to the PCC for providing us with this enrichment program.  We finished our unit on Heredity and will take a quiz next week.  We have been writing drafts of fiction stories in writer's workshop and have been using the Chrome Books to create a special writing project as well.  It has been fun to conference with students electronically in the Google Docs application.  Digital learning at its best!  Our new interactive read aloud is Little Dog, Lost by Marion Dane Bauer.  Everyone is LOVING this book and we have been able to make many cross curricular connections to it throughout the day.  There are SO MANY reading skills that we are working on; ask your child to tell you about them.  We are on target to finish it by Tuesday and we were left off with a HUGE cliff hanger today.  The moaning was LOUD when I said that we would need stop reading and  continue reading on Monday; it was music to my ears. :)  In addition, Firefighters Keith and Chris cam to JFK to talk about fire safety and to encourage everyone to make an escape plan for their home.  Did you do your escape plan AND practice?

Mrs MacMurray has had the children create wonderful projects on Mixcraft-you can listen here.

Though next week is a short week, we have much to do.  We will be finishing our special writing project, crafting, taking a quiz on heredity and giving the Thanksgiving speech, not to mention finishing Little Dog, Lost.  

Have a great weekend and practice those speeches!

Mrs. W

A Big Bite

Our week started off with great speeches by ALL of the candidates for Student Council.  There were many great ideas and it was a tough decision for voters.  On Wednesday we voted and Ravin C. was elected to represent Room 23.  Congratulations, Ravin.  I liked MANY of the candidates ideas, but one in particular made me think about a change we could make in our classroom.  Sammy B. suggested that we do "Party in a Bag," once a month to celebrate all of the birthdays in our class.  I like it, and the children do too!  We are going to figure out a way to make this happen.

We are continuing to work on reading non fiction and close reading in reader's workshop while incorporating the goals of our Social Studies unit on Mexico.  This is tough work, but we are all hanging in there.  We brainstormed ideas for fiction stories and will begin writing them next week.  The students are excited to get started on this next writing project.

We started talking about heredity this week in Science and are learning about inherited and non inherited traits.  We used the Chrome Books to visit the AMNH site for children and looked at The Gene Scene.  The link is in the science gadget to the right.  In addition, Mrs. Merten set everyone up with a "Kid blog," which will go live next week.  The blogs will be attached to this blog. :)

In math, we are working on multi digit multiplication.  We have been using place value blocks as a way to use concepts of place value to solve multiplication problems.  I will post videos next week but know that we are making VERY GOOD progress with this skill.  Keep practicing those math facts!

On Tuesday, our nation will celebrate Veteran's Day.  We would like to say thank you to all of the Veteran's who have served our country and a special shout out to our families who have relatives who are Veterans.  THANK YOU!!!

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Williams