End-of-Week Update, 2/28

Fourth grade mathletes ready to compete!

Representing 21 different countries with flags and medals - Measurement Olympics was a blast!

What we're up to:
The music of the bugle, the waving of the flags, the shining of the medals and all the fourth grade mathletes in the gym (in their PJs!) - that's how the 1st Annual Math Olympics started at Kennedy Center (aka the gym).  In the past couple of weeks, we traveled to different fourth grade classes with our teams to learn about measurement - distance, weight, liquid capacity, and time.  In our Fourth Grade Olympics, we had 5 events!  One event was Luge with Mrs. Perry (our favorite) in which we measured time and had to race on a scooter board and put fluffy balls of yarn into a bucket.  Another favorite event was speed skating with shoebox speed skates.  Other events included the snowball shotput, the snowflake discus, and the hockey slap shot.

We were PSYCHED that Dawn Cusick, author of Bug Butts wrote to Mrs. Adams before vacation!  In her "shout out," she said she was happy we'd enjoyed and learned from her nonfiction book.  We couldn't resist asking her questions of our own about what it's like to be a nonfiction author.  She wrote back and gave us lots of advice on tables of contents, research, and considering our audience!  Then we got to work on our own nonfiction books!  We started by picking a topic that we know a lot about and organizing our tables of contents.  You can organize a table of contents in lots of different ways.  One way is to organize by questions, another way is by putting chapters in an order or sequence, and the most popular way was by organizing by different topics.  We then gathered information about our topics to help us fill in ideas for our different chapters.  Towards the end of the week, we gathered books and websites as research and added them to our fact pages.  Next week, we're going to start drafting!

In reading, we have been reading nonfiction books at school and at home.  At home, we've been using a new nonfiction bookmark to track our thinking.  We have four different tasks to complete in response to our nonfiction reading.  We're very close to finishing James and the Giant Peach!  Check out next week's blog for some cool projects!

In social studies, we finished the United States and had our Southwest quiz before vacation.  We started a new unit in science about heredity and animal adaptations!  In PE, we are collecting and donating money for Jump Rope for Heart with Mrs. Perry.  In music, Caroline earned Room 20's first black belt!  Go Caroline!  We are trying to keep up consistent at-home practice so we can all earn all our belts.  On Friday, we earned a movie with our specialist points and enjoyed "Alvin and the Chipmunks Chipwrecked" with our stuffed animals.  We think the theme was growing up, not holding grudges, and being responsible for your choices.

What's coming up / Notes from Mrs. Adams:

• All next week is Read Aloud week!  We'll be doing lots of different activities in school and I encourage parents to read aloud with their children at home.  Nonfiction makes fun reading aloud as do favorite picture books!  Just because your child can read independently does not mean the benefits of reading aloud go away - have fun and celebrate Read Aloud week!
• Next Tuesday, 3/4 is the Barnes and Noble book fair in Bellingham.  I will be a "celebrity reader" at some point from 6 PM - 7 PM.  Come join in the reading fun!
• Next Wednesday, 3/5 is a full-day professional workshop day for teachers, so no school for students!

End-of-Week Update, 2/7

Fourth grade Olympic mathletes are ready for the games to begin!

What we've been up to:
"Ahahahhaha!" everyone screamed as we read Bug Butts by Dawn Cusick.  If you're wondering if this is REALLY about bug butts, it is!  We are studying nonfiction in reading and (very soon) in writing!  We have been discussing how nonfiction books are organized (text structures) and what tools the author uses to teach us new information (text features).  We've been creating posters while listening to James and the Giant Peach.  We have been collecting quotes from the book and explaining what the quotes tell us about each character.  We've been working in groups collecting quotes about Centipede, Earthworm, Old Green Grasshopper, Ladybug, and James.

In social studies, we have concluded our study of the Southwest and we brought home our study guide / study packet.  We learned about Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico.  We learned about its geography, varied climate, and the Navajo people.  One interesting fact that we didn't know before this week is that the Navajo people had to walk 300 miles to get to Fort Canby.

In math, we kicked off the Grade 4 Measurement Olympics.  There are four groups and 22 countries represented.  Each team is a different country.  Today, we designed our passports with the country's flag.  Each day next week we will be going to a different fourth grade classroom with different teachers for math and on Friday next week we will be hosting the pentathlon - a five event competition.  Stay tuned for photos and videos!  We also took our fractions test on Friday.  Everyone worked so hard!  This week in math, we also took a group challenge on fraction questions.  A group challenge is when we get with our table groups and work together on a set of questions.

In health, we learned how important our faces can be and that we can tell where they were from just by looking at their faces.  On Tuesday (P.E.) we started "Jump Rope for Heart" to help kids in need of money for their heart disease.  On Wednesday, we sat by a fire with our feet up for a snow day!  Thursday was a very exciting day for Team 20!  We performed our orange belt song called "Merrily We Roll Along" for Mrs. MacMurray in recorder karate.  Some people were even brave enough to go for the green belt song called "Who Has Seen the Wind?"  Congratulations to Cormac, Caroline, Stephen, Leo, and Jared!  Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Mac are so proud of all the belts earned this week!  On Friday, Mrs. Hess helped us design our own medals for the Math Olympics next week!

What's coming up / notes from Mrs. Adams:

• Our Measurement Olympics will be next Friday, 2/14!  If you have sent in any shoeboxes, THANK YOU!  If you have any other shoeboxes at home, we'd really love them!  They do not need to have lids.
• Students have been given an optional Winter Olympics scavenger hunt!  They will be due after vacation at the conclusion of the Winter Olympics.
• Our Southwest quiz will be on Thursday, 2/13.  Study packets went home on Thursday and student have made study plans in their assignment notebooks.
• The Barnes & Noble book fair is being held on 2/13 at the Bellingham Barnes & Noble.  I will be reading at some point between 6:00 and 7:00 PM.  Please come on down for good books and a fun time!

The Spanish team is working on their intricate flag!

The Canadian team is including the trademark maple leaf!

The Italian team is getting ready for the games!

The Russian team is designing the flag of this year's Olympic home!

The Australian team is working on their detailed flag!

End-of-Week Update, 1/31

What we've been up to:
"Let's party!" we all exclaimed on Friday at our essay publishing party.  It was a brief, but busy day as we shared our final copies of our essays.  In case you forgot, an essay is when you persuade someone to agree with your opinion.  You need to have a thesis statement and 3 distinct reasons along with mini stories and parallel lists.  We will be bringing our essays home to share with families next week.  At our publishing party, we kicked it off with a fun dance party with the "minions."  See video below!  Then, we introduced our writing partners and read our essays aloud.  Check out the photos below, too.

In math this week, we learned how to multiply fractions and whole numbers, how to decompose fractions by breaking them into smaller fractions, and how to add/subtract mixed numbers.  We are having a fraction quiz on Friday, February 7th.  Check out the pink study guide!  In social studies, we started the Southwest and it only has four states!  We learned about the Painted Desert, which looks like it's painted but it's really made by nature.  We also read about the Grand Canyon!  See our previous post about the Haffenreffer Museum's visit on Monday!  It was a busy week!

Andrew reading his hockey essay!

Gretchen wrote about her awesome mom!

Leo wrote about his amazing mom, too!

Jared convinced us all to give Sky Zone a try!

Josh persuaded us that Cape Cod is the place to be!

Mani reading her essay about her wonderful friends!

Jack wrote all about Patriot Place and why it's so fun!

Stephen wrote about the best gift he ever got - his iPod!

Maggie made us want to take a trip to California!

Cormac wrote all about why he loves a very special place - his house!

Chase persuaded us that dance is the best sport!

Noah convinced us that TV is a great way to relax and have fun!

Kileigh wrote all about why her nana's campground is the best!

Natalia wrote about her sweet and gentle dog, Ginger, and why she's the best dog a kid could ask for!

Will wrote about his cat Peka, the best cat in the world!

Justin convinced us that owning a hamster is really a lot of work!

Josh persuaded us that his dog Tucker is the best dog ever!

Cullen persuaded us that brothers are really friends, even if you fight sometimes!

Alexis persuaded us to visit Pompano Beach on our next trip!

Corrin wrote all about her fabulous mom!

What's coming up / Notes from Mrs. Adams:

• Fractions quiz is coming up on Friday - please refer to the pink study guide for topics that will be covered!  I will not be posting an at-home study packet for this as it is a quiz.  Any questions, please ask Mrs. Adams!

Haffenreffer Museum, Eskimos Presentation

Playing games is one way the Eskimo people practice hunting skills!
Here we are playing a ring toss game!

Brr! It's cold up here in the Arctic Circle.  We started our week with Mrs. Silvia from the Haffenreffer Museum who taught us all about the Eskimos and brought lots of awesome artifacts for us to see, touch, and try out!  Here's what we did and learned!  Mrs. Silvia brought in animal skins and horns / antler to show us.  She brought furs of a snow rabbit, black bear, caribou, lynx, red fox, weasel, and a mink.  We also saw horns and antlers from walruses, caribou, and a narwhal.  She brought in some pieces of whale baleen as well, which is soft and flexible inside a whale, but hardens up when it hits the air.  Eskimos never wasted any part of the animals they hunted!

Mrs. Silvia also brought some traditional Eskimo knives, such as the ulu.  We learned that when young hunters catch their first seal, they are supposed to give it as a gift to the oldest woman in the village as a sign of respect.  Then, she usually gives a new pair of boots as a thank you!  We learned that Eskimos built their houses underground, not out of ice (igloos) and they had to crawl through a tunnel to get into their houses!  The Eskimo mothers carried their babies in their hoods of their coats because it's warmer in their hoods and it keeps the babies close to their mothers.  Every year there is a dog sled race in the Arctic called the Iditarod.  We learned that the dogs (like huskies and akeatas) have to wear snow booties on their paws so they don't get cuts on their paws as they run 1,000 miles on the Arctic ice!  During the sled race and during hunting, Eskimos wore special goggles that had little slits in the lenses to keep snow out of their eyes.  We'll be making our own Arctic goggles this week!

Now, Native Americans in the Arctic are allowed to hunt just one whale a year since many whales are endangered species.  We learned about the tundra and how there are no trees that can grow due to the permafrost (frozen ground).  This makes it challenging to live in the Arctic Circle because you cannot use wood as a building material unless you find driftwood.  We learned about (and tried on) overdresses, which are dresses that are worn over your clothes and coat to keep your clothing clean.  Usually girls wear overdresses - check out the photos below!  The Eskimos played a lot of different games to help with their strength, hand / eye coordination, and stamina for hunting.  Some of games included a ring toss (Mrs. Silvia, Caroline, and Justin were the only ones who got a ring on the post!), a stick catching game (which  was harder than it looked), Eskimo yo-yo (which is different than regular yo-yos), hot potato, and a "humming" toy!

Check out the photos below and THANK YOU to the PCC for another amazing enrichment program!

End-of-Week Update, 1/24

We learned the Cupid Shuffle this week!  Check it out and dance along - we can teach you the steps!

What we've been up to:
This was a brief but productive week!  In specials, we were very busy.  In PE, we continued with our gymnastics unit and learned the Cupid Shuffle!  Listen to it (above) and we can teach you the steps.  This week everybody got their white belts in recorder karate and we're hoping everybody gets their yellow belts next week!  Keep practicing!  In chorus, we listened to "The Cats' Pajamas," an accapella group (meaning they sing without any other instruments).  In art, we got to bring home our terra cotta pinch pots and we started creating ancient Greek pottery to tell a story through our drawings.  We had two sessions of the GRADE (a reading test).  It was not the most fun, but we did our best work!  In math, we learned how to do something really cool - it was how to change improper fractions into mixed numbers and mixed numbers into improper fractions.  Mixed numbers are a number that is made up whole numbers with fractions.  On Friday, we met with our 3rd grade math buddies and review factors and multiples.  We took a quiz on the West and we think we did well because of our study plans!  We want Mrs. Adams to give lots of "WOWs" when she corrects them this weekend.  For morning work this week, we had a mini math quiz of comparing two fractions that were super close.  We're getting excited because we are almost done with our essay drafts!  We only have to write introductions and conclusions on Monday and then we'll have final copies of our essays!  It might have been a very short week, but we had an action-packed 3 days of fun!

What's coming up:

• The Haffenreffer Museum's Cultural Caravan will be back on Monday for another presentation!  Be sure to ask your child what they learned and insist on specific information!
• Next Friday, 1/31 is a half day for students.  Please let me and the office know if your child will be going home a different way than normal.
• The student council is running a shoe and sock drive for the next two weeks (through 2/7).  Visit http://www.gottahavesole.org/ghs/ for more information about the organization we'll donate to!

End-of-Week Update, 1/17

We did an amazing job with our first chorus concert!

What we've been up to:
"Smile big!" we heard at the chorus concert.  We had lots of fun at our first chorus concert singing three songs plus a warm up for 4th grade and 5th grade parents.  We were so proud of Andrew, who sang a solo for "Wake Me Up!"  Check out the videos of our show below at the bottom of the post.  In reading, we started reading James and the Giant Peach and so far James has lost his parents who got eaten by a rhino, has had to live with his two horribly mean aunts for three years, and has received magic crocodile tongues, which have escaped and grown into a peach.  A very big peach.  In math this week, we were learning how to make fractions into decimals and percents.  We also took our fractions test this week!  In health this week, we played some fun nutrition games which helped us to master what kinds of food are good to eat and not-so-good to eat.  In music, we brought home our recorders and we're planning on practicing a lot so we can all earn our white belts next week.  In art, we painted our terra cotta pots to tell a story.  They have to dry, so we'll get them back soon.  This week we finished earning our 25 points and are planning on voting for a prize next week.  In writing, we made "boxes, bullets, and squiggles," which help us with figuring out what to write in our essays.  Today in writing, we picked one reason and we wrote a topic sentence, mini stories, and parallel lists for our drafts!  In P.E. this week, we jumped and stretched and moved around when we started our gymnastics unit.  On Monday, we had a substitute teacher, Mrs. Cameron and did hard work to earn a good report for Mrs. Adams.  On Friday, we watched the Martin Luther King, Jr. "I Have a Dream" speech with all the other fourth graders.  We learned that Martin Luther King wanted to let freedom ring and have his children be able to sit at the same lunch table as white children.  Martin Luther King was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi.  He was arrested many times for his boycotts and demonstrations.  We also learned that he sadly died at the age of 39, but he had a huge influence on our lives!  Let's see what adventures await next week!

What's coming up / Notes from Mrs. Adams:

• Students will be taking a West quiz on Friday, 1/24.  Be sure to check out their study guides and study plans (NEW!!) in their Assignment Notebooks!
• Please use the "Useful Documents" section to the right to download copies of the character traits bookmark and chart!

Here we are doing one of our warm ups!

Here's a video of our first song!

Here we are singing in French!

Manal & Andrew sang beautiful solos!

Here we are singing "Wake Me Up!"  The audience loved it!

Check out our moves with glow sticks!

End-of-Week Update, 1/10

Go, Josh!  He's one of this week's celebrity singers!

What we've been up to:

"Go!  Go!  Go!" we all cheered and yelled as our teams raced down the court towards hula hoops, picking up cards as fast as the speed of light (almost).  In P.E. this week, we did a New Years relay to collect years before the other three teams we were playing against.  For music, we played "Song of the Seas" on our recorders.  It sounded rough at first, but after we practiced more it sounded better and better!  This week in art, we made terra cotta pinch pots and "terra cotta" means "red clay" or "red earth."  In chorus this week Josh T. got celebrity singer.  Check out his picture with Dory above!  In writing, we're working on essays.  This week, we wrote mini stories for every reason for our thesis statement and a wrap up sentences for every mini story.  We also started writing parallel lists for each reason in our essay.  We sounded like Martin Luther King, Jr. because we repeated the same sentence stem for every item in our list.  Keep on the lookout for some awesome essays!  In reading, we read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and thought about the main character's character traits - childish, immature, hyper, and persuasive.  We've been working on determining character traits in our own Readers' Workshop books.  In social studies, we learned about physical and cultural geography of the West.  We collected facts about the West to help us form an opinion about the region.  We learned about all kinds of fractions this week.  We added and subtracted fractions, compared them, put them on a number line, and ordered fractions from least to greatest.  We're getting ready for our fraction test on Wednesday!  But, perhaps the best part of this week was when we had our 3rd grade buddies from Mrs. Henneberry's class visit to do some multiplication practice games!  We all got a partner and played a fun game to help us review our facts.  It was fun to work together and we can't wait to get together again soon.  Check out the photos below!  Well, that's it for this week, readers!  See you next week!

What's coming up / reminders from Mrs. Adams:

• Our fraction test will be Wednesday, 1/15.  Please see the right side bar of the blog under "Useful Documents" for both the study guide and the at-home review packet.
• The 4th and 5th grade chorus concert is next Friday, 1/17.  Please review the information from Mrs. MacMurray about the concert times.  Also, please remember that Mrs. MacMurray has requested no jeans or athletic gear, so please be sure to dress your best!
• In the right side bar of the blog under "Useful Documents," you can find the new at-home character trait bookmark and the character trait chart that is found on the back of the bookmark.  Please feel free to download and print another copy if needed at home.