Yesterday, March 6th, was World Read Aloud Day. On this day, people all around the world stop and read aloud to promote literacy. You can read more about World Read Aloud Day here.
To celebrate this day, Mrs. Williams' class and our class joined two second grade classes. Mrs. Wilmarth and Miss Golden brought their classes up to our rooms. We talked about how important it is to learn to read, and celebrated that we are all Awesome Readers!!!!
Ms. Golden's class came with us back to our class, where we read aloud a picture book that we'd chosen.
After we read our books, each of us was able to paint a watercolor picture about our experience. We could paint a scene or character from our book, an image in our minds, or even a picture of us reading together. We will be putting these pictures into a book to share with our new friends.
Our finished products...
What a great day! We are hoping to do more activities with our new friends.
Holly~
Congratulations to Holly. In February she competed in the Bay State Games, and she got a 3rd place bronze medal with her solo in figure skating. This qualified her for the State Games of America in July in Hershey, PA. Way to go Holly!!!
Here is Holly during her competition!
Delaney ~
This weekend, Delaney went to Boston and participated in a reenactment of the Boston Massacre at the Old State House. Later, she went to the Worcester Art Museum to see her own art work displayed in this Museum. Awesome Job!
Our first week back from vacation was filled with fun things!
In Reading, we continue to read Snow Treasure and are really enjoying the ending! What an exciting book! We will finish this book up next week, and then begin our study of mythology. We will also begin talking about the MCAS testing, which is at the end of the month. During our reading Zone time, several students opted to participate in a book group about the book Dying to Meet You by Kate Klise. We all enjoyed hearing their book talk about this book on Wednesday. (Apologies that the teacher voice is so much louder than the kids' voices!)
In writing, we wrapped up our essays, and will have one more day to put the finishing touches on them. We will write one more personal narrative in March.
In Math, we started a unit on Measurement. This week we practiced using a variety of measurements from the customary system. We also learned about making a table to convert various measurements. Here's an example of one of our tables showing Feet to Inches and Yards to Feet to Inches.
In Social Studies we wrapped up our unit on the Northeast this week. We will begin studying Washington, DC next week. We also have our first SKYPE call planned for next Friday at 9 AM. We did some work to prepare for this call today in technology.
SPOTLIGHT ON:
Bentley ~ Michael and his family got a new puppy! His name is Bentley. Isn't he CUTE?
From the Teacher's Desk As you know, we have a student teacher in our classroom, Ms. Cassie Boulay. Cassie is finishing her Bachelor's Degree in Elementary Education at Framingham State University. She has been slowly teaching different subjects throughout each day during the time she has been with us. She will be working in our class until the middle of May. The students have done a wonderful job welcoming Ms. Boulay into our classroom. From time to time, I will be leaving the classroom, so that Ms. Boulay can complete her student teacher requirements. On these days, I am in the school building, accessible at any time by phone. In addition I am going in and out of the classroom throughout the day. Ms. Boulay and I meet at the beginning of each day, the end of the day and during lunch on these days, so that I am fully aware of things that are happening in the classroom. As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. We are lucky to have such a wonderful addition to our classroom!
What a week we had in room 24! We all enjoyed a late start on Monday, to clean up from the blizzard!
We began the week celebrating Chinese New Year. This is the year of the snake! We made snakes in class, and discussed which animal represented the year we were born. Mrs. Merten is the rooster! The children were split between two animals. Ask your child which animal represents their birth year. You can also check that out here.
In reading, we have continued to read the adventure story, Snow Treasure by Marie McSwiggan. This story is excited because the adventurous characters are about our age! We continue to work on summaries and literary elements using this book.
In writing, we are working to finish up our essays. After vacation, we will finish these, and then we will complete one last personal narrative before we have to take the writing part of the MCAS on March 19th. Mrs. Merten is sure we will be ready!
In math, we wrapped up the second part of our fraction unit ~ adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers. Although this new concept was a little challenging, we worked hard, and did and AWESOME job on our assessment! Mrs. Merten and Miss Boulay helped us to create a new math "journal" that we can bring back and forth to school to use as a reference.
In science, we have continued to work on different aspects of weather, and in social studies we are working on our unit about the Northeast. We will have an assessment in social studies on the Friday we return after vacation. We took a study guide home on Friday. Mrs. Merten also told us about a fun activity we will be doing using Skype, talking to other fourth grade students around the US. We will have our first Mystery State meeting on March 8th with a classroom from somewhere in the Northeast!
On Thursday, the entire fourth grade danced our way into school, doing the Cupid Shuffle. This is an annual fourth grade tradition, and such a fun way to get moving on Valentine's Day! You can see us dancing in the video below.
On Thursday, we also enjoyed our party in a bag, and shared Valentines. We read a short myth about Cupid, and were surprised that we didn't know as much about him as we had thought.
Friday, we celebrated Winter Wonderland Day by wearing our PJs and slippers to school. We learned a cool way to cut out snowflakes, and will use the snowflakes in poetry next week.
From the Teacher's Desk
The time between the first of the year and February vacation seemed to fly by! We have been working hard at learning new concepts. We have started a math journal for the children to bring back and forth to school, to use as a reference. This will allow students (and parents) to have a reference when doing homework and/or preparing for tests. This will be a great supplement to our Everyday Mathematics Student Reference Book (SRB), which the children have been using this year. Some of the new concepts we are learning this year do not have enough information in that text. We will use this throughout our next unit on measurement.
I am very excited about our Skyping project. We will be "meeting" with different fourth grade (and one third grade) classes from across the US, to participate in a "mystery state" activity. We will ask the students questions about their state and then try to guess the state that they're from, and then we will answer questions about Massachusetts and they'll guess our state. We will meet our first group of students in a few weeks.
It
was another busy week in Room 24! On Monday, we had an awesome visit
from Mrs. Silvia of the Haffenreffer Museum at Brown University. Her
presentation about the Inuit was terrific. Below are some videos and
pictures from her presentation. We will use some of the information we
learned to create power points in the coming weeks.
Here we are playing two traditional Inuit games. The winters were long and families spent a long time in their igloos.
Here we are participating in traditional Inuit dance. The drumming was a very important part of this.
We have been working on writing our own essays during Writer's Workshop, and have continued to write free verse poems during our Poetry Workshop with Mrs. Williams. We enjoyed some of our poems today!
In Math, we took our first fractions assessment. We will be working on extending our knowledge of fractions in the next few weeks. We will learn about adding, subtracting and even multiplying fractions. Today we had a chance to play a few math games. It was fun!
In Social Studies, we began talking about regions, and will start our journey across the US with the study of the Northeast next week. In Science, we will begin the next part of our Weather unit, with a review of the water cycle and various types of precipitation.
Spotlight On ~ Declan and Michael
Last weekend, Declan and Michael played basketball during halftime of the Wheaton College Mens Basketball game. Way to go guys!
We had a fun week in Room 24. Our student teacher, Miss Boulay, began in our class on Tuesday. She will be with us every day until the middle of May. Miss Boulay spent the week getting to know our routines, and the children. She even started to work on our Interactive Read Aloud, by reading a chapter in our newest book, Snow Treasure.
In math, we have been working on learning about fractions. This can be challenging, but we are doing a great job! We have our fractions test this Thursday. Mrs. Merten will send home the study guide on Monday, but if you want a preview, there is a link to it on the right. We also made a chart including some of the fraction rules we have learned. Here it is!
In science, we took our first Weather "Quest". Mrs. Merten will correct these over the weekend and will have them on Monday. Next week, we will begin our study of the Regions of the US. We will start with an overview, and then begin our "Journey Across the US" by learning about the Northeast.
In writing, we have gotten well into our unit on essays and are excited to start to write some of our own. In poetry workshop we learned about Robert Frost and even got tolisten to a recording of him reading "The Road Not Taken." It was very cool. We continued working on Power Point presentations in Technology workshop.
Mrs. Williams lead us in some Yoga to celebrate National Yoga Recess day on Friday. Click here to check out her yoga blog, and see a picture of all of the fourth graders in our yoga pose!
On Monday, our anthropologist in residence, Mrs. Silvia from the Haffenreffer Museum at Brown University, will return for our second presentation about Native Americans. We will learn about the Inuit. We are grateful to the PCC for funding this awesome opportunity!
We are making great progress with Recorder Karate. Mrs. Merten said she would play her own recorder if we all make Black Belt, so keep working at it! Check out Mrs. MacMurray's Music blog.
Getting back to school after the holiday break was tough (even for the teacher) but we made it! We have buckled down and really gotten to work.
In Reading, we did our first Interactive Read Aloud of 2013, Stone Fox. We really loved the book, despite its sad ending. We enjoyed watching the tv movie, Stone Fox, this week, and completed a comparing/contrasting activity about the book and the movie. Many of us enjoyed the book more than the movie.
Next week, we plan on beginning our new Interactive Read Aloud, Snow Treasure.
In math we have been learning a lot about fractions. Some of this has been challenging for the children, but with practice, they will do great! We have learned many math games to use with fractions. If your child would like to bring a game home with him/her, that would be a great way to practice.
In Social Studies, we wrapped up our unit on Canada, and had our unit test yesterday. We will begin our study of the United States in the next few weeks. In Science we are wrapping up the first part of our weather unit, Weather Maps and Instruments. We have a quiz scheduled for next Thursday. The study guide went home today, and has been uploaded. You can find the link to the right.
This week was a busy one!
On Wednesday, the Miscoe Hill Skippers jump rope team came to Kennedy School from the Miscoe Hill Middle School in Mendon. They came to kick off our Jump Rope for Heart program, and to get our students excited about becoming "heart healthy". They were fantastic! We were all impressed by how much practice these students do. They are really dedicated! Below are a few pictures and videos of their performance.
Today was our chorus concert! We were all dressed beautifully! Below are some pictures, and a sneak peek of one of the songs.
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