Fourth Grade Beginnings

We've had a busy two weeks getting used to fourth grade! We've read lots of books and practiced building our reading stamina, and we've met our Reader's Friends. Reader's Friends is a partnership between our class and Mrs. Tech's kindergarten class. Every Monday afternoon, we take the kinders to the library, read a book to them, and help them check out a book to take home. We get to be their Reader's Friends for the whole school year! We also finished our first read aloud, "Larger than Life Lara" by Dandi Daley Mackall. It was a great book! We learned that you should never judge a person based on how they look, because they might be really good on the inside if you get to know them.

In math we spent last week learning about shapes and creating abstract shape art. Today we took our first quiz, and then we learned about coordinate graphing. Our classroom has been turned into a giant coordinate grid, and we found our individual coordinates yesterday. Today we used the Promethean to practice plotting points on the grid.

In science we finished our first experiment (the apples turned brown and got smaller), and now we're starting our first major unit about insects. This week we will begin making Keynotes about insects, and will have to work hard to complete them by the end of next week when we will present them!

First Week Fun!

Wow! The first week of school is already over; some of us are tired, but some of us want to come to school tomorrow! Or maybe not...

We started off our school year with a whole-school assembly called Terrific Together Time. We'll be having an assembly every Thursday morning for the whole school year! We got to meet our new principals, Mr. Bryan and Mrs. Dreiling. We think they're AWESOME! They taught us the power clap, introduced the teachers, and surprised us by dressing up and lip syncing to "Tonight's Going to be a Good Night!" They have pretty good moves! We all got to get up, clap and dance with them.

Today we learned that there are a lot of different teachers here to help us. Mrs. Ruder, our Title I teacher, taught us to play a really fun game called "Look Down, Look Up." It helped us remember our Character Counts! pillars, especially trustworthiness and fairness. Mrs. Smith, one of our special education teachers, also joined our class today. She read us a story about people who are different from the rest of us; it taught us that everyone is special in their own way, and that we should never exclude people because of what they look like, sound like, or do.

We also became scientists today. We even learned a new word, "hypothesis," which is harder to say than you would think! Our first experiment involves apples. We peeled, them, weighed them, smelled them, measured them, and looked at them closely. We're going to observe them to see how they change after they have been peeled. They'll be in our classroom for one week while we see what happens!

Our first week of school was AWESOME. We can't wait to see what fourth grade is all about!

Classroom Preview

Wow! It's hard to believe we have just over a week before the new school year begins. I've been working hard in our classroom to make sure that everything is just right for the first day of school. This is my favorite time of year; there are so many exciting opportunities ahead of us, and I get the privilege of getting to know twenty-two new people (and their families)!

I hope you've had a most-amazing summer; I can't wait to hear about all of the adventures and fun you had. I had a few adventures of my own; we'll have a lot to talk about when school starts!

Our building theme for this year is "Lights, Camera, Learning!" All of the teachers have been busily decorating and getting things ready to go. I hope you are starting to get excited too! For now you can spend some time looking at our blog pages (in the right-hand navigation menu), and looking at a few "preview" pictures of our classroom. Enjoy the rest of break; I'll see you next week!