We gave our December Speeches today. It was obvious that all of the children worked hard and practiced! Once again, the children could be video taped if they wanted. 14 wanted to be taped! The others preferred having a picture taken. I have posted all of these for you to see. Enjoy~

Here are some videos of the speeches this morning!

Last Week in Review

These are some photos of our math review centers last week!

I'm sorry for the late post!

Last week was quite busy in our class. We finished reading The Family Under the Bridge. As you know, we held our small food drive! We collected 413 lbs. of food for the Franklin Food Pantry! It was nice that we could help families in our own community.

We also began reading Stone Fox last week. This is a nice story about a boy and his dog. We will finish reading it this week. Our focus skill for this book is writing a clear, concise summary. After reading, we will watch the movie and complete a compare and contrast activity. Children will note the similarities and differences between the book and the movie and they'll be discussed in our class.

In math we finished our multiplication unit and took our math test. Mrs. Merten was impressed with how well we did! We learned two ways to multiply in this unit ~ lattice multiplication and partial products multiplication. Click on the different methods for instructions on these new algorithms.

We also finished writing our December poems. We wrote rhyming poems this month, in the style of Robert Louis Stevenson.

The rest of this week will be busy with wrapping up our activities before vacation begins on Friday!

Wow!

Wow! The Kennedy School 4th graders collected 413 lbs. of food for our food pantry. We were excited about all of the food we could donate for those who aren't as fortunate as we are. Mrs. Merten took some videos of us loading the food. They are posted below.

This is the food collected in our classroom.

Below are pictures of ALL the 413 lbs. of food from the whole fourth grade.

Franklin Food Pantry Food Drive

To coincide with our latest book, The Family Under the Bridge, the fourth graders have been invited to participate in a food/supplies drive to help those in need in our own community. The food/supplies drive will take place next week. While any donations of non-perishable food items are welcome, the Franklin Food Pantry has put out a list of items that are especially in need during the holidays. You can find the list here. A notice was also sent home with your child today, and this list is on the back.

We will also be in need of a few parent volunteers who would be available next Thursday, December 16th in the morning, to box and deliver the items to the Franklin Food Pantry (as they have requested the donations delivered by noon). If you are available to help on that day and time, please let your child's teacher know.

Thank you for your support with this!

Our Week In Review

Last week was a busy one in room 24! Mrs. Merten was absent for two days, home with her sick daughter. We were lucky enough to have Mrs. Cameron for a substitute.

We finished our study of heredity with our unit test. Mrs. Merten was very proud of our performance. We continued with our study of Canada, and enjoyed learning some of our information through power point presentations.

We began a new interactive read aloud, The Family Under the Bridge. This is a story about a homeless family who lives in Paris, France. While we read this book, we will focus on cause and effect, theme, and author's message. We'll continue to focus on asking "talkworthy questions", too.

Next week, we will have our test on Canada. We received a study guide on Friday. Mrs. Merten is encouraging us to study this week, a little bit every night. Mrs. Merten is looking forward to meeting our parents this week!

Speeches and Our Week

Last week, Ruby was the citizen of the month for fourth grade. Here she is, sitting in the Ladybug Chair. Way to go, Ruby!


An Exciting Week

Well, it was a really fun week in our class. We had some exciting things happen. First, Mrs. Merten received an email from the author of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda. This is a funny book she read last year and has recommended it to some of our class. Dennis is reading another one of this author's books, Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run, and we are waiting for some of his other books. There is a long and involved story about how Mrs. Merten got the email on this blog, and then how she contacted the author (who has a pen name :). I'm sure your child can share the details. The exciting part of this is that the author, Tom Angleberger, sent us a large origami Yoda. You can see him in the picture of our class, as well as in his own picture. We were really excited by this!

Here we are- Yoda is in the back with Mrs. Merten



Up close and personal. And below, the note from Tom Angleberger!

Today we had to give our first speeches! Mrs. Merten was VERY IMPRESSED! It seemed like many of us had practiced and practiced. Mrs. Merten gave the option of having our speeches video taped. There were many who chose to be taped, and you can see their speeches below. If someone didn't want to be taped, we took a picture!

Author Alert!!!!

Andrew Clements will be appearing at Tatnuck Booksellers in Westborough, MA on Saturday December 4, 2010 at 1:00 p.m. Andrew Clements is a very popular author for elementary school students. Click here for more information on this event.

Black and White Day

What a fun day today was!
First we did "Penguin Math". The children chose to work with a partner or independently to complete some logic puzzles, code problems, and even a penguin strategy game. Then we listened to the rest of our book, Mr. Popper's Penguins. We really loved the ending to this book. After that we took our English test and a quick quiz about the book.

Then we had a really fun time playing charades with our Mr. Popper vocabulary. Mrs. Merten was impressed with how well we did playing this game with some tricky words! Then we were able to watch National Geographic's March of the Penguins. It was sad in places, but overall it was a great movie!


From the Teacher's Desk

Dear Parents,
Thank you! This week I received our donations from the Wishing Well. Thank you! I really appreciated the donations, and all that you do for our class. Have a wonderful weekend!

Our Week In Review (Last Week)

It was a really busy week for the students of room 24 last week. We started off the week with our Student Council speeches. We had 11 students run for the position of our classroom representative. Though we could only have one winner, I was really proud of the effort and dedication of all of our candidates. You can see pictures of our candidates here. On Wednesday we voted, and elected Alyssa! Congratulations!

This week we also continued our study of Mexico. We learned about a Mexican holiday, The Day of the Dead. It is celebrated on November 1st and 2nd in Mexico. We watched a Power Point Presentation with Mrs. Williams's class, and then created our own Day of the Dead masks. We also learned about some other aspects of life in Mexico. In Math we started learning about decimals. This can be a tricky thing to learn, but we're all working at it! We also worked more on our tessellations in math. In reading we are getting near to the end of our read aloud, Mr. Popper's Penguins. We are really enjoying this quirky book, and are looking forward to our Black and White Day on Friday!

Mrs. Merten sent home the November/December book order last week. The orders are due by November 16th. You can find many more titles online at www.scholastic.com. Please let Mrs. Merten know if you would like more information about how to order books online.

GOOD LUCK TO OUR CANDIDATES!

On Monday, our Student Council candidates gave speeches about why they would make a good member of the Kennedy School Student Council. Everyone did a great job! We had ELEVEN people run for the Student Council. Our vote will be this morning! Good luck to all of our candidates!