Our Week In Review

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 to listen 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.

Fraction Chart

Here are some of the rules we have discussed when talking about ordering fractions.  I hope that this helps.

Our Week(s) In Review

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.

Before the show!

Mae's introduction

And our sneak peek...

Speeches and December Activities

Yesterday we all had a chance to give our holiday speeches.  We had some children want to be video taped!  We have both pictures and videos of everyone!  After vacation, we have 3 more speeches to hear!

Earlier in the week, we worked with Mrs. Williams' class on a fun project.  We were able to craft while working on following directions.  Here are some pictures of  that activity.

I hope you and your families have a wonderful vacation filled with fun, family and friendship!

Family Crests

As part of our wrap up to our last Interactive Read Aloud of 2012, The Family Under the Bridge, we have been working on creating family crests. Part of our family crests involved coming up with a family motto.  The motto of the family in the book was "We're family, and family sticks together."

Here is a list of our family mottos:

Allen~ Try your best
Brown~Take life slow, and never rush
Cashin~ Never leave each other
Griffith~ Have a strong imagination
Hughes ~Keep your rooms clean and not messy
Kane ~ Never give up
Marsh~ Never give up
Martin~Never give up
Natarajan~ Never worry about your past, always believe in your future
O'Brien ~ Never tease each other
Owens ~ As long as you try, that's all that matters
Park~Believe in your future
Sassaman~ As long as you try, that's all that matters
Swinamer~Never give up
Titmuss ~Never give up
Toli~ Always stick together
Walmsley ~ We're family and we'll help each other
Zaidi ~Always stand up for what you believe in

Our class motto (and Mrs. Merten's family motto)~  Be kinder than necessary

Our Week In Review

What a busy week!  The children are working hard and getting a lot finished in order to wrap up 2012!  We have almost finished reading our Interactive Read Aloud, The Family Under the Bridge.  This story has really opened up many discussions in the classroom. I'm very proud of how the children have learned to talk about books and the characters that interest them.

In math we have begun to work on division.  This is a new and challenging concept for many of the children. Though we will be continuing to learn about division, I thought it may be helpful for parents to have a resource. Below is a video of someone doing the partial quotients ("low stress division") method of dividing.




Our Mexico test was Wednesday this week.  The tests were sent  home today.  Mrs. Merten was very proud of the effort on this test!

Our food drive was a great success!  The food pantry volunteers arrived this morning and we filled the van with our donations.  I will post the food total as soon as I hear from them.  Below are some photos and a video of us loading the food.

I also received a note from the Franklin Food Pantry.  I have included it below (321 pounds of food!)

From all of us here at the Franklin Food Pantry, THANK YOU!!  It was a great pleasure for me to be able to speak to your students and hear all their fantastic questions!

Congratulations to you all on a job well done - you collected 321.4 pounds of food!  This will go a long way towards helping our neighbors in need during these hard winter months.



 Here are Bleddyn and Declan.  This week they came to school dressed alike ~ and it wasn't even twin day!

SPOTLIGHT ON:

EMMA:  Last weekend, Emma participated in a gymnastics meet.  She won a first place medal for her vault and second place all around.  Way to go! 

Our Week ~ Food Drive

This week we continued to read The Family Under the Bridge. The children have been doing a great job with this book!  We will wrap up this book within the next week and a half.  Reading this story has lead to many discussions about homelessness and need.

Yesterday a representative from the Franklin Food Pantry came to Kennedy and discussed the Food Pantry. We learned that this year 600 Franklin families are using the food pantry. Last year the food pantry distributed over 150,000 lbs. of food!  We will be collecting food for our food drive through Friday morning. Our food will be picked up Friday morning by volunteers and will be weighed at the pantry.  Look for our totals next Friday!  Here are some photos of this week.

Math Centers

Math Centers

Math Centers

Math Centers

Math Centers

Ms. Lynch from the Food Pantry

Making "Ojos de Dios with Mrs. Williams' class