February Fun!

As we head out for February vacation later today, we wanted to share some fun photos from our week together!

We worked hard to finish the final copies of our essays this week!  We worked on the Chromebooks to type our essays, which included an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.  Our job as authors was to convince, persuade, and change the minds of our readers.  We think we did a good job with that!  We included mini stories and lists to give our readers examples and try to make them agree with our point of view!  On Friday, we got together with our friends in Miss Farrell's class to celebrate our essays!  We gave our "speeches" from podiums and got to hear so many different essay topics - about pets, family members, fun places to visit, sports, hobbies, games, and so many other topics!  We laughed at some of the funny mini stories and had a great time sharing all of our hard work.  Check out the photos below!

Also this week, Mrs. Adams was completely surprised by a baby shower on Wednesday morning!  A big HUGE thank you to all of the wonderful Room 20 families for their generosity and thoughtfulness and to Mrs. Sawyer for organizing and bringing everything in!  Check your email for a photo / update on Baby Adams in the next couple of weeks!

Haffenreffer Museum Program, Inuit

Thanks to the PCC, we enjoyed a really special presentation by Mrs. Silvia from the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology in Providence, RI.  Her second visit to fourth graders was all about Native Americans from the Arctic and we learned so much!

We learned how Arctic people hunt for land and sea mammals, how they dress, what they do to survive in a severe climate, what their daily lives are like in modern times, and some special celebrations they have.  We played traditional Inuit games which were designed to help children develop hand-eye coordination for hunting!  We also performed a dance of thanks along with drum music (thanks, Alex!)  Finally, we all got to create snow goggles similar to the ones that Arctic people use to see through the blinding, blowing snow in the Arctic Circle.  Check out the photos and videos and be sure to ask a Room 20 student all about what we learned!  We're looking forward to two more visits from Mrs. Silvia this year about Native Americans from other different regions of the United States.  We can't wait!

January Wrap Up!

Welcome to February and Happy Groundhog Day!  Here in Room 20, we've been enjoying snow days, writing essays, thinking deeply about characters, and learning about our country and region.  Read about more details below!

In reading, we're continuing our study of character traits, both with our at-home reading (see the links for the Character Trait bookmark and chart on the right) and with our in-school reading.  We just started a new book, A Cricket in Times Square, and we're working hard on choosing specific and accurate character traits that we can back up with evidence from the book.  Check out our character trait posters below.  We'll be adding more to them in the next couple of weeks as we finish the book!

In writing, our essays are really starting to take shape!  We worked on collecting evidence for our three reasons in the forms of mini stories and parallel lists of examples.  We wrote mini stories to illustrate one time when each of our reasons was true.  Mini stories help give the reader a specific example of one time that the reason was true for the author.  Parallel lists, like the ones we observed in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, are powerful for giving lots of specific examples for the reader to see the many ways the reason was true.  Now that we're done collecting our mini stories and parallel lists, we're starting to draft our essays!  Hopefully we'll finish up this week and enjoy a publishing party soon - keep an eye out for pictures!

In math, we're still studying fractions.  We're working on adding and subtracting fractions with like (same) denominators.  We've learned how to simplify our answers to fraction addition and subtraction problems, how to use number lines to show how how to add and subtract fractions, and how to solve for "variables" or unknown values in fraction addition and subtraction problems.  Next week, we'll be learning more about mixed numbers and improper fractions and we'll take a Topic 12 test before vacation!

We wrapped up our heredity unit and took our test and now we're onto our next big social studies unit on the regions of the United States!  We started our study of the US with the Northeast, which also happens to be the region in which we live.  We have a lot of experiences in the Northeast - some of us brought in postcards and pictures of places we've vacationed or seen with our families and friends.  So far, we've identified the Northeast states, capitals, and postal abbreviations, learned about the important geographical features of the Northeast (like how glaciers shaped the land and some important landforms and bodies of water), identified major natural resources, goods, and services (economy) of the Northeast, and described the climate of the Northeast.  We'll be wrapping up the Northeast next week and moving onto the Southeast after vacation!

We've done some great technology work with our mix-it-up friends in Room 21!  We created short Google Presentations with a mixed-up partner about a specific Canada or Mexico research topic and presented them to each other using clear speaking voices.  It was cool to learn about so many different topics, like the Northern Lights, Day of the Dead, bullfighting, and Canadian sports!  Looking forward to creating more presentations soon!

As we kick off February, we're looking forward to enjoying a special "party-in-a-bag" snack on Friday, 2/13 to celebrate Valentines Day with Room 20 friends!  If anybody is interested in exchanging valentines, please use the class list to be sure every classmate receives a valentine.  This is, of course, optional!