Speeches and Our Week

Last week, Ruby was the citizen of the month for fourth grade. Here she is, sitting in the Ladybug Chair. Way to go, Ruby!


An Exciting Week

Well, it was a really fun week in our class. We had some exciting things happen. First, Mrs. Merten received an email from the author of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda. This is a funny book she read last year and has recommended it to some of our class. Dennis is reading another one of this author's books, Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run, and we are waiting for some of his other books. There is a long and involved story about how Mrs. Merten got the email on this blog, and then how she contacted the author (who has a pen name :). I'm sure your child can share the details. The exciting part of this is that the author, Tom Angleberger, sent us a large origami Yoda. You can see him in the picture of our class, as well as in his own picture. We were really excited by this!

Here we are- Yoda is in the back with Mrs. Merten



Up close and personal. And below, the note from Tom Angleberger!

Today we had to give our first speeches! Mrs. Merten was VERY IMPRESSED! It seemed like many of us had practiced and practiced. Mrs. Merten gave the option of having our speeches video taped. There were many who chose to be taped, and you can see their speeches below. If someone didn't want to be taped, we took a picture!

Author Alert!!!!

Andrew Clements will be appearing at Tatnuck Booksellers in Westborough, MA on Saturday December 4, 2010 at 1:00 p.m. Andrew Clements is a very popular author for elementary school students. Click here for more information on this event.

Black and White Day

What a fun day today was!
First we did "Penguin Math". The children chose to work with a partner or independently to complete some logic puzzles, code problems, and even a penguin strategy game. Then we listened to the rest of our book, Mr. Popper's Penguins. We really loved the ending to this book. After that we took our English test and a quick quiz about the book.

Then we had a really fun time playing charades with our Mr. Popper vocabulary. Mrs. Merten was impressed with how well we did playing this game with some tricky words! Then we were able to watch National Geographic's March of the Penguins. It was sad in places, but overall it was a great movie!


From the Teacher's Desk

Dear Parents,
Thank you! This week I received our donations from the Wishing Well. Thank you! I really appreciated the donations, and all that you do for our class. Have a wonderful weekend!

Our Week In Review (Last Week)

It was a really busy week for the students of room 24 last week. We started off the week with our Student Council speeches. We had 11 students run for the position of our classroom representative. Though we could only have one winner, I was really proud of the effort and dedication of all of our candidates. You can see pictures of our candidates here. On Wednesday we voted, and elected Alyssa! Congratulations!

This week we also continued our study of Mexico. We learned about a Mexican holiday, The Day of the Dead. It is celebrated on November 1st and 2nd in Mexico. We watched a Power Point Presentation with Mrs. Williams's class, and then created our own Day of the Dead masks. We also learned about some other aspects of life in Mexico. In Math we started learning about decimals. This can be a tricky thing to learn, but we're all working at it! We also worked more on our tessellations in math. In reading we are getting near to the end of our read aloud, Mr. Popper's Penguins. We are really enjoying this quirky book, and are looking forward to our Black and White Day on Friday!

Mrs. Merten sent home the November/December book order last week. The orders are due by November 16th. You can find many more titles online at www.scholastic.com. Please let Mrs. Merten know if you would like more information about how to order books online.

GOOD LUCK TO OUR CANDIDATES!

On Monday, our Student Council candidates gave speeches about why they would make a good member of the Kennedy School Student Council. Everyone did a great job! We had ELEVEN people run for the Student Council. Our vote will be this morning! Good luck to all of our candidates!

Our Week In Review

This week we had a lot of fun things happening in Room 24!

Early this week, we started learning about tessellations in math. We enjoyed using pattern blocks, and will use templates to recreate our tessellations soon. It is really fun.

We also learned about measuring and practiced using a map scale in math.

Our Summer Reading was rewarded yesterday with Casey Carle, the Bubble MAN! Everyone got directions on how to make bubble solution. We enjoyed his performance. 97% of the kids in 4th and 5th grade completed summer reading! We should all feel proud!

In reading we started reading a new Interactive Read Aloud, Mr. Popper's Penguins. We are enjoying this story about an eccentric man who gets a penguin for a pet. We are discussing asking "talkworthy" questions and making predictions.

In writing, we finished our List Poems, wrote some Halloween Haikus, and started a scary Halloween story!

In science we got to use magnifiers to look at different objects, and we learned about the parts of a cell. We will get to use the microscopes on Monday!

Our Week in Review

This week we had our Puff Mobile Races (check out the earlier post for pictures and videos). We also finished writing our "When I was Small" paragraphs, just in time for Open House. Last night was Open House and we all had a great time! Today we took our first class reading assessment. It long and some of us thought it was hard. Mrs. Williams invited us over to her class this afternoon. We got to look at Pond Water through a microscope! It was really creepy when we saw creatures moving really fast. We saw lots of creatures in the water. Our terrariums are really growing well. Some have roots! Some of them are dying. All of our terrariums are showing the water cycle. Some people moved seats today.

In math, we started learning about tessellations. They will be fun!

Today we started learning about list poems. We wrote a class list poem:

Things to do if You're a Leaf

by the Kids in Room 24

Sway in the wind

Change color in autumn
Fall off trees
Get raked into a pile
Fly up in the air
Crackle
Fly in the breeze
Watch the moon go down and watch the sun go up
Help build a bird's nest
Decompose
Sprout
Drink
Feed caterpillars
Make air
Photosynthesize


From the Teacher's Desk It was wonderful to see so many of you at Open House last night. The children were so proud to show you all that they have accomplished so far this year. Everyone certainly has been working very hard.I hope that everyone who attended the Open House was able to sign up for a conference. If you need to reschedule your conference, please let me know as soon as possible, particularly if it is an evening appointment. If you were unable to schedule an appointment, I will be contacting you with a date and time to discuss your child’s progress. Thank you to everyone who made a donation to our class wishing well. Your money will be well spent on much needed classroom supplies.

Puff Race

Today was our puff mobile race! We had a great time!




Our puff mobiles

More of our puff mobiles



The winners of the "Boys' Race"

The winners of the "Girls' Race"

The overall winners!


The overall Girl and Boy winners! Both from our class!

A Photo Finish!


The Puff Off!



The overall winners!