November Speeches

Our November speeches were a success!  Below are pictures and videos of our speeches.  Have a wonderful holiday.

Our Week In Review

Our last week has been quite full!

In Reading we began reading Mr. Popper's Penguins. This book was written in the 1938 and won the Newbery Award. Many of the children have seen the movie, however the book is much different (and better)!  We will continue with this book for another week or so, focusing on asking questions, characters, making predictions, and how making predictions helps you to think while reading.  We are enjoying this book!

We have been working on a special writing project, along with finishing up our sun poems.  We also have started to discuss using nouns.  We have discussed how choosing the correct noun in your writing allows the reader to have the clearest and most accurate picture of your story.

In math, we continue to practice division.  This is the first topic which is more new than review.  We have moved on to learning about decimals and their place values.  When we have a quiz on decimals in a few weeks, we will include a portion of review of division.  Many of the errors students are making are fact errors, addition errors, and subtraction errors.  

We wrapped up our Mexico unit, and completed our test last week.  We will be wrapping up our unit on Heredity with our assessment on Tuesday.  We will also present our speeches on Tuesday.  Students will have the option of having their speeches video taped for our blog.  Look for those videos and photos on the blog on Tuesday.

From the Teacher's Desk

Dear Parents,

This is the season of giving thanks! I want to take a minute to thank you for your support of our school activities. Thank you for all that you have done this fall to make your child's transition to fourth grade a successful one! 

Thank you for your generous donations to the class store! I am also grateful for the Wishing Well donations. I will be purchasing some new books for our classroom with the Barnes and Noble gift card and some other necessary items with the Walmart card. All of these donations of supplies, time and energy are all greatly appreciated!

Most importantly, I would like to thank you for your support with your children. The consistency you provide, and daily help you give to them supports what we do in school, and allows the children to understand the importance of our connection. I truly appreciate your support, and am thankful to all of the wonderful families in our class.

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and enjoy the company of family and friends.

Warmly,
Katie Merten

Our Week in Review

Even though it was a short week, it was a busy one in Room 24!

In writing, we continued to work on our Ivan poems, and finished publishing our narratives.  We also completed a narrative writing assessment.

In Reading we finished up some of our Ivan activities, and focused our reading on non-fiction.  We have read about Gregor Mendel and about Mexico, focusing on non-fiction text features such as bold/italic print, captions, headings, maps and tables.  We have been learning a lot in both science and social studies, and about how to read non-fiction in a different way than fiction.

On Thursday we learned about "ojos de dios" or God's Eyes.  This is common craft done in Mexico. Together with Mrs. Williams' class, we created our own God's Eyes.

Today we had a very special treat!  Our Creative Arts Friday was highlighted by Mrs. Tracey!  She came to our class and taught us all about the Aztecs (from Mexico).

 We reviewed a bit about their history and discussed their artistry.  We drew some Aztec suns, focusing on imagery and emotion.  We then drew our suns on foam board.

 Mrs. Tracey helped us with ink and a brayer, and we created some Aztec sun prints!  We learned about Mexican poet, Octavio Paz, and  wrote some free verse poetry in his style.

We will mount our suns with our poetry soon! Thank you, Mrs. Tracey for such an awesome day!!!

Poetry Spotlight

Here are two poems written today about the sun prints.

There's a sun

among the trees

that smiles at me.

And I smile back.

                          ~Emily 

Sad Sun

Tears are dripping

down my burning face

as the rain falls

I grow weaker

and lose my light.

It is soon dark.

                      ~Sarah

From the Teacher's Desk

The next few weeks will be busy with preparing for our tests in science (Heredity) and social studies (Mexico).  The children have all of the necessary materials to begin studying for both tests.  They have been reminded to bring their materials back and forth to school/home, so that they are able to participate in school activities as well as study at home.  Students should also be preparing and practicing for their November speech.  The speeches will be given in front of our class on November 26th.  If your child will not be in school on that day, please contact Mrs. Merten, so that arrangements can be made.

Our Week in Review and Our Ivan Celebration!

This was a very busy week in Room 24!  We finished reading The One and Only Ivan, and we even needed Mrs. Marano to finish the last few pages (Mrs. Merten was crying).  Many of us rated this book a 10!

In math, we started learning division using the "partial quotients" method of division. This method of dividing requires the children to think of the number as a whole, rather than as parts.  Traditionally this is challenging at first, but usually by the second week of practice students feel quite confident.  We are keeping a running survey of how the children are feeling, and most have moved away from "YIKES" and are at "PRETTY GOOD".  That is awesome progress.  Helping with this method can be challenging at home.  Students have been encouraged to bring their SRB home nightly.  Remember to return to this blog for the videos to help as well. We will be taking a division quiz next Friday.  Look for a study guide in your child's backpack today.

Celebrating Ivan

Today was a wonderful day!  We spent the entire "Creative Arts Friday" celebrating the end of our first Interactive Read Aloud.  The day started out with some Ivan Math. Then Mrs. Williams lead us in "Jungle Yoga".  We were tress, snakes, elephants, frogs and even sloths.

Jungle Trees

Elephant

Cobra/ The Snake

After yoga, we participated in art centers.  Children completed 4 art pieces in mediums discussed in this book.  Ivan painted with finger paints and colored with both crayons and markers.  We all had a chance to do this, as well as a pencil drawing. Finger painting was our favorite! Thank you to Mrs. Hess, our art teacher, for providing us with finger paints and paper!

We will take our inspiration from our artwork and from our story, and we will write poems about Ivan next week.  

We enjoyed our jungle and circus snacks!  Here we are sharing them.  Check out our tally chart of snacks we brought.

We brought Mrs. Toye a "jungle plant" and a thank you card. We just loved reading this book so much!!!

Later we played "Win, Lose or Draw" with vocabulary words from Ivan.

Angie and Charlotte had to "act out" swinging from vines!

Picasso

Finally, we shared some of our Ivan Powerpoints with one another.  It was a wonderful day.

Student Council Election

Congratulations to all of our candidates.  Speeches were wonderful, and everyone thought carefully about their vote.  Our class representative is Emily!

Mrs. Merten was VERY proud of everyone's reaction to the vote.  Though there were 15 disappointed students, they all applauded for Emily!  Congratulations to all who ran!!!!