Our Week In Review

This week we completed reading The Family Under the Bridge.  We enjoyed learning about this family, and we especially enjoyed the happy ending!  We are working on family mottos, and will share those with you soon.

Travis giving a book talk

In writing, we have finished drafting our fiction stories.  We enjoyed writing these stories, and are looking forward to publishing them next year.

We continue to learn about fractions, and will work much more on this in the time following vacation.

We also practiced following written directions while making a craft with Mrs. Williams' class.  We enjoyed this time!

Yesterday we gave our December speeches. The children have improved dramatically since our November speeches.  Though getting up in front of the class is difficult, Mrs. Merten was impressed with everyone!  Below are pictures or videos (student's choice) of your child.

From the Teacher's Desk
It was wonderful to meet with you last week.  I believe it is so important to keep communication open, and to work together to help your child grow.  Fourth grade can be challenging, and the children have certainly risen to the occasion.  Thank you, too for all of the kind comments about our class blog.  I am so happy that families are enjoying it!

I hope you all enjoy your vacation, filled with fun, family and friendship.

Our Week In Review

Our week began with the fabulous program from the Haffenreffer Museum at Brown University.  This has been an exciting week for us, with the snow, report cards and parent /teacher conferences!  The students are very excited!

In Math, we have started a new unit about fractions.  Though much of the initial content is review, fractions can be a challenging concept.  We will be using many of the materials from the Everyday Math series, and  the Student Reference Book is a great resource for homework. Students are encouraged to bring this book home nightly.  We will continue to learn about fractions after the December break.

In Reading, we celebrated the end of reading Mr. Popper with Black and White Day! We had a great day reading non-fiction about penguins, playing Win, Lose, or Draw, and watching March of the Penguins.  We had some tasty looking black and white snacks, too.

In Writing, we will continue working on our fiction stories.  We have also started writing rhyming poetry with Mrs. Williams.  Students will be working on both of these activities next week.

Our food drive was a HUGE SUCCESS.  The Kennedy fourth graders collected 377.5 lbs. of food for the Franklin Food Pantry.  Thank you to everyone who participated!

Haffenreffer Museum

Today we had our first of four visits from Mrs. Silvia of the Haffenreffer Museum at Brown University.  This is a wonderful program presented to the fourth graders by classroom, and we are grateful to the PCC for funding this.  During the four visits, we will learn about  different Native Americans from various regions of the United States.  Today our program was about archaeology and how finding artifacts in the soil allows scientists to learn about different groups.  We were looking for information about the "Massachusett" tribe.

Mrs. Silvia first introduced the concept of anthropology and archaeology.  Students were given pieces of pottery which they were told to imagine that these pieces were found in an archaeological dig.  The students had to put the pieces together to form 1, 2 or even 3 different pots, based on their markings.

 Next students learned about counting rings on a tree, and about how the number of rings is one way to learn more about the area where the tree was found.

 Students then were able to DIG.  Mrs. Silvia set up a mock dig site, and students sifted through dirt to try to determine what type of group lived in the area we were digging.  Students took notes and drew images of the artifacts that were found.

Mrs. Silvia tied it all together!