A Busy End to the Year

Poetry Coffeehouse

Our week began with the Poetry Coffeehouse. Everyone recited a poem, and Mrs. Merten was so PROUD! We were happy to have Ms. Liz step up to the mike and lead our parents in the Poetry Bus. Thanks, too, to Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Honor who were brave enough to step up to our Open Mike. The day was a great success! (Thank you to Mrs. Cashin for sending in some pictures!)

Sports Day!
Despite the heat, Sports Day was a huge success! We enjoyed many fun stations, and we especially loved getting sprayed at the water ball station!

Engineer in Residence

We are wrapping up our week with our Engineer in Residence, Mr. Adams. He came today and guided us through a really fun project ~ Light Your Way! The children had to use their knowledge of electricity to create a hands free flashlight. What a fun way to end our week and our unit. Check back for pictures of the final products.

What A Week!

Wow! It was a busy week in Room 24! We have been working on our Magnetism and Electricity Unit. The students' favorite part of this unit is when they are able to work with the magnets, wires and bulbs. This week, the children made simple circuits, lighting a bulb and making a motor run. They learned how to do this with and without switches. Our power for this was a D-Cell battery. We also learned about series and parallel circuits, and the groups will have a chance to create these types of circuits next week. We also will learn about electromagnets next week. Our science test will be Friday, along with a very special project involving our Engineer in Residence, Mr. Adams. Below are some pictures of the children working in science.

This week we also had Tie Dye Tuesday. We were lucky enough to have fabulous weather, and the shirts were dyed outside and hung to dry. Thank you again to our wonderful parent volunteers! We couldn't have done it without you! Remember to wear your ORANGE t-shirt on Tuesday for our Coffeehouse (9:45) and on Wednesday for Sports Day!

Our recorder concert was FABULOUS! We had many, many black belts in fourth grade this year! The children should be so proud of themselves! Mrs. Merten received an honorary black belt, and has been practicing her songs at the end of the day!

Get Ready for Tie Dye Tuesday!

Today we began preparing for Tie Dye Tuesday! We learned about the different lines that can be created with the rubber bands, and saw some shirts that were dyed in years past. We also learned that we will have ORANGE shirts (Mrs. Merten's favorite). Below are a few pictures showing us tying our shirts.

We are very excited for this activity on Tuesday. Please remember to wear clothes that are ok to get dye on, as this can be a messy activity. Notes were sent to parent volunteers earlier this week. If you volunteered and didn't receive the notice, please contact Mrs. Merten for details about Tuesday.

It is our hope that the children wear their shirts for the following events:
The Recorder Concert ~ June 2
Our Coffeehouse ~ June 7
Sports Day ~ June 8

Charlotte's Web

On Friday, we watched the cartoon version of Charlotte's Web! We were allowed to bring in a special snack ~ one that might be found at a County Fair like the fair in this book. We had some delicious treats ~ candy, cotton candy, candy apples, corn on the cob, and many more! When we finished watching this movie, we discussed the many similarities and differences that there were between the book and the movie. I think most of us liked the book the best!

Tile Project

Today, our artist in residence, Mrs. Cronin (Mrs. Merten's mom), came to teach us about painting tiles. She gave us a lesson about how clay items are fired in a kiln. Firing is the same thing as cooking, but it is much hotter- 1800 degrees! We used our Day of the Dead designs to create a tile which will look like the design. The hardest thing to get used to was the colors- the glazes look much different than they will when the tile is done. We hope to have the tiles back around the 2nd week of June. They will look much different!

What a Week!

Wow! What a week we've had!

In Reading, we began to read Charlotte's Web. This is one of my favorite books! I enjoyed it so much as a child, that I love to teach it to my students!
Our goals for this book are:

To read with expression (Please talk to your child about Reader's Theater!)

To understand the use of quotation marks (This is a writing goal, but it is also very important to understand how these are used in order to understand dialog in reading)

To understand characters ~ we are moving past character traits to characters changing over time, and finally to character's motivation. This is a very high level skill that the children are able to work on!

To infer (to use background knowledge + text to determine what is probably true)

The children are really enjoying this book, and are doing a great job with reader's theater.

In Social Studies, we wrapped up learning about the midwest. Our test is scheduled for Tuesday. We have 2 more regions to go!
In Math, we began to review our year in math in preparation for the MCAS. We are spending one day on each topic, reviewing the skills we learned this year. In Science, we finished our study of weather today, with the study of storms. I like to save the "best for last" ! Our science test is scheduled for next Thursday. Once we finish with this, we'll wrap up our year of science with our study of Electricity and Magnetism.


From the Teacher's Desk
This was a great week! Thanks to everyone for the wonderful Teacher Appreciation Week. The staff here really enjoyed all of the fabulous treats!