Our visit with Miss Liz last week ended with a poetry reading. The children learned about presentation and poetry in the "oral tradition". Below are just a few pictures of our reading, along with some pictures of our "Rip and Write" poetry. I hope you enjoy them!

Class Update

April is National Poetry month. In honor of this, we began reading Love that Dog, by Sharon Creech. This is a book written in verse, telling the story of a fourth grade boy, Jack, who does not like to write poetry. The children loved this story. This week, we continued reading about Jack with Hate that Cat, the sequel. You can find more about both of these books by checking out Sharon Creech's website here or by clicking each title above.

Last week, as part of our Weather unit, we created "Cloud Collages". This activity, while a lot of fun, was geared toward learning the weather that is brought by various types of clouds. This will be a good study tool to use for our Clouds/Wind test which is on Friday.

As you may have heard, we have been learning about Mythology in our class. Last week, students chose a topic to learn more about. The topics included Creatures from Mythology, Family Ties, Creating a Graphic Novel(the group chose the story of Hercules), and the Goddesses. Below are some pictures of the final projects, along with photos of the group.

Today, our poet in residence, Ms. Liz came to our class. Elizabeth McKim, "Ms. Liz" is a published and famous poet world wide. She teaches at different colleges in the United States and in Europe. The children really enjoyed her visit, and have started to write some beautiful poetry. Below are some pictures of her visit. Stay tuned for some student poetry after her next visit this Friday!

Another Eagle Cam

Thanks to Heather and her family for sending in another live Eagle Cam. This one is from IOWA! There were 3 eggs in the Eagle's nest, and two have hatched. The third is expected to hatch any day! If you are interested in checking out these eagles, click here!

Our Week in Review

What a week! We started the week finishing our Reading MCAS! We continued to listen to Percy Jackson - The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan. We are loving it! We also continued our study of mythology by breaking into groups to work on different projects. These are the projects we've chosen:
*Writing a myth in graphic novel format
*Studying the goddesses of Greek Mythology
*Studying how the gods are related "Family"
*Creatures in mythology

We are writing books and making posters! Everyone will have a chance to create trading cards about their favorite gods, goddesses, or creatures later this week.

We also began National Poetry Month with the assignment of our Rock Poetry project. We have all chosen a song, and are really excited about sharing it with the class. Rock Poetry Day is 4/14 in our class. We can wear Rock and Roll t-shirts that day too! It will be an exciting day :).

In writing we wrote some Limericks, and will begin writing poems about mythology next week.

We finished up our study of the Southeast, and will be taking our Southeast test on Tuesday. We are working on our National Parks booklets in class.

From the Teacher's Desk:

We made it through the ELA MCAS! The children should be proud of how hard they worked during this test. I know I am! The fourth graders will take the Math MCAS in May. I know that they will work just as hard.

I'm sure that you have noticed that the children are once again doing Daily Language every day. This has become quite difficult for some of the children. The students are given ample time in the morning when they arrive to complete this assignment. The skills addressed in the sentences are things that have been taught earlier in the year. I encourage the children to use a dictionary and to take their time, and some have really begun to do this. Others continue to need reminding to work more slowly, to think about the sentences, and to use a dictionary. If you notice your child having trouble with this, you can help by reminding him/her to slow down and double check with a dictionary. I know that once this sinks in, everyone will show great improvement!