We had a fabulous week! On Monday, Danielle Niles of WBZ news (channel 4) came to JFK. She taught us a lot about the weather. Did you see us on Thursday Morning? Mrs. Merten tried recording us, but missed our moment of fame! Be sure to keep checking the WBZ website to see our videos. They should be posted soon.
On Friday, Mrs. Weber (Nick's mom) came to JFK to talk with our fourth graders about astronomy and the connection to Greek Mythology. Her presentation was fabulous. She showed us this video about star/size comparison.
Mrs. Weber also showed us a program she uses with her high school students. It is called stellarium, and you can find the free program here. We are very grateful that she took time out of her schedule to share her knowledge with us.
...the Maple Sugaring Festival at Moose Hill Audubon. Here is one of our classmates watching as they are cooking the sap down to evaporate the water to make the syrup the same way it has been done for centuries. What a fabulous way to extend our learning outside of the classroom!
It was a busy week in Room 24. Many of you have heard that Miss Cote taught most of the lessons this week. It was her first (of 2) takeover week. This week provided her with the understanding of how a typical week goes, when you are the teacher all of the time. Mrs. Merten was in and out throughout the week to check on things, and to teach a few lessons!
This week, we began reading The One and Only Ivan. This book is one of Mrs. Merten's FAVORITES! We had the opportunity to look at a couple of gorilla and elephant "cams" at various zoos around the country. This gives the children a clear way to picture the characters in this book (Stella and Ivan). It also allows us to practice our skills of observation. Our cameras can be found on our Curriculum Links page.
We gave our St. Patrick's Day Speeches on Tuesday. We all noticed that it has become much easier to speak in front of our class! Mrs. Merten saw improvement in all of us. Below are pictures and videos of our speeches (student's choice).
In math we have continued to learn about fractions and decimals. We will work on this topic until early April. If your child is having trouble with homework, he/she can use the pearson realize website as a support. Of course, please contact Mrs. Merten with any concerns.
Today was a really exciting day! We had a MYSTERY SKYPE with a 4/5 classroom from Iceland! It was really awesome to hear the teacher speaking to her students in Icelandic! We asked and answered only Yes/No questions to figure out where they were. It was much harder than it sounds! We learned a lot about their school, the International School.
This week was filled with many fun activities. The highlight of our week was Chocolate Chip Cookie Math! What fun! Your child will have a lot to share about tasting, gathering data, graphing the data and looking at our data as a whole. We learned that some students really LOVE cookies, no matter what kind! Others, are very particular about their choices.
Mrs. Leenhouts' cookies were our favorite!
We also began thinking about our informational writing, and enjoyed brainstorming some ideas with Mrs. Merten and Mrs. Williams. We will begin writing our informational pieces next week. We continue to work on fractions, noting how fractions and decimals are related. The students are working hard to understand this challenging topic.
Our study of the U.S. will bring us to the Southeast next week, and in science we are learning about Hurricanes with Miss Cote.
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