End-of-Week Update, 9/19

For word study this week, we came up with synonyms, or
 "shades of meaning" for our Wordly Wise words!

What we've been up to:
We are completing a special week of 4th grade filled with fun new activities like Len Cabral, word art, engineering with Mr. Adams, and finding out about Mrs. Adams' baby!  Listen up for all we did this week...

We had a special visit from storyteller Len Cabral since we all did such an awesome job doing our summer reading!  He was just as amazing as last year and told us some new stories.  We learned a lot about storytelling, and therefore writing, from Len Cabral.  We noticed that he chose interesting, unusual, and funny parts of his story to describe in great detail.  These descriptions made us really pay attention and we were able to make a movie in our minds as he was talking.  Secondly, we learned that it's okay to "embellish" a little when telling a story as long as it isn't too ridiculous.  Last, we learned that even stories that seem boring or ordinary can be really interesting if you tell them just right!  We came right back from Len Cabral's visit and did some storytelling of our own using our own stories.  We also created timelines of our stories to help us as we start drafting next week.  Check out the pictures / videos below of Len Cabral (and Room 20 storytellers) at work!

In science, we had a special treat this week!  Mr. Adams (Mrs. Adams' husband) came in to teach us all about engineering.  He is an electrical engineer and he builds circuits for lots of different radar systems!  He taught us about how important teamwork is and how engineers work together to follow the design process.  He also told us about our first engineering project - a wind-powered "puff mobile" that we'll build with our team and "puff" across the gym.  We met with our engineering teams and started coming up with plans that fit the requirements.  We'll start building next week - we can't wait!

Mr. Adams showed us this video about why engineers' jobs are so cool!

He also showed us this video from NASA about the engineering design process!

In reading, we have been continuing to read with an active mind.  We started our first read aloud book this week, The Sisters Grimm: The Fairy-Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley.  We listened with active minds and already have a lot of questions and connections to the characters so far!  We're wondering what could have happened to Daphne and Sabrina's parents and want to find out more about their "grandmother."

We've been busy working with our Wordly Wise words - creating "word art" and thinking about "shades of meaning" (see picture above) with our words.  Next week, we'll spend some time sorting our words and changing them by adding different word parts!

In math, we've been continuing our work with multiplication and division.  We had the chance to play some multiplication fluency games (see pictures below) including "Buzz," "Multiplication War," "I Have, Who Has?" and more!  We learned some rules about "special quotients" involving zero and one and made "special news reports" about the rules.  We got a chance to be creative and show what we learned about division.  It was fun!

In music, we got our recorders!  Mrs. MacMurray taught us how to hold our recorders, how to blow into them, and how to play our first note - B!  We are excited to practice hard and earn our belts.  Also, in chorus Alex was named one of the first celebrity singers!  Go, Alex!  We had picture day on Thursday.  We also voted on whether or not we thought Mrs. Adams was going to have a boy or a girl baby.  We found out that most of us were right - the baby is a girl!  We think she should name her Dory...

Yay, Alex!  First celebrity singer of the year in chorus!

Stay tuned to our blog for more updates coming soon!

What's coming up:

• Open House is Thursday, 10/2 from 6:30 - 8:30 PM here at JFK - mark your calendars!  We're already hard at work on some projects and work that we'll be showcasing that night.
• There is no school next Thursday, 9/25 in observance of Rosh Hashana.
• Our field trip to the Franklin Public Library is scheduled for Friday, 10/3!  More information and permission slips will be going home soon.