Tis the Season!

The last week and two days have been filled with nothing but fun!!! We've finished up keyboarding, visited the Plains Art Museum, completed an art project with our first grade buddies (unfortunately I can't post pics of this as I don't have permission from our buddies' families), spent an afternoon making Christmas presents (can't show you those!), had the flu (oops! that wasn't fun...but apparently many of us were hit over the weekend...), celebrated our December Character Champions, and turned our classroom into a theater. Oh, and I gave them all cookies and cocoa, and now they're coming home to you all sugared up! Merry Christmas!!! ;) 

I absolutely LOVE visiting the Plains Art Museum each year. The gallery tour was fantastic! We got to see two galleries focusing on Picasso and Star Wallowing Bull (who students have already seen at school). Then it was off to the Creative Arts Studio for a lesson with Ms. S and the long-awaited Bison project.

We put "I'm reading..." signs up on our lockers. They are laminated so we can write on them with dry erase and keep them updated. They are THRILLED to have these!!!

Our classroom SmartBoard and projector work great to create a theater. Thank you to all the parents who sent treats, cups, and napkins...the party was great!!!

The weekly word writing is coming home today and isn't due until the Monday after break.

Have a fantastic winter break!!!

Tech Week

This week has been a BLAST! Mrs. Weist returned for session #1 of keyboarding, we learned Google Classroom, and participated in Hour of Code. As we introduced new technology this week we had a heart-to-heart about being good "Digital Citizens." We talked about never giving out your first and last name, never sharing personal information (especially about where you live or your phone number), not having conversations with people you don't know online, and only posting things that you would be proud of if your mom or Mr. Carlson were looking over your shoulder. :) The consensus is...we LOVE Google Classroom!!! They love that they can post and reply to one another's comments, and I love that it supports our keyboarding instruction and that I can much more easily view and respond to answers (without hauling stacks of papers around with me). Total win-win!!!

This week in reading we began reading Why the Sea is Salty, the first of a few texts focusing on how people understand and interact with nature.

I

n math we are almost done with unit 3 on fractions, decimals, etc. Most of our work this week was converting fractions to decimals (tenths), and then becoming familiar with tenths, hundredths, and thousandths through meters, cm, and mm. Our base-ten blocks became our 1 whole (the flat, or large square), the longs/rods became our 0.1, and the cubes our 0.01. We also used 1.0 meter, 0.01 for centimeters, and 0.001 for millimeters. Lots of measurement conversions! These two got creative with how they used their base-ten blocks to show 0.4 is greater than 0.14. We will take our Unit 3 Assessment on Wednesday!!!

This kiddo rocked out our first Word Sort scavenger hunt. Look at ALL those words that he found in his book that match his sort!!!

This week we (or I) learned a few important things during our first round of Words Their Way. #1 - A second copy of word cards needs to go home for families. #2 - We won't glue our cards in our notebooks until Friday. #3 - A weekly list of activities to do at home would probably be helpful. 

My son's teacher also uses WTW and has graciously shared the letter she attaches to her students' lists. I'll work on adapting that to 4th grade and have it ready to go Monday with the next sort. Please continue to send questions or suggestions! We are all learning this new program together!!!







This week (and in the month of December) students all over the world are participating in an educational event called "Hour of Code." Code is the language used to write computer programs, games, apps, etc. We watched a short video to learn about coding, and then dove right in! Here is the website if you want to check it out at home... CLICK HERE!!!

As if keyboarding and Hour of Code didn't make our day awesome enough already, it ended with Mr. Carlson coming in for his yearly reading of The Grinch. I swear every year he gets better and better!!!

Back at it!

Wow, did we come back from Thanksgiving to rock out this week! During both writing and reading we learned strategies for summarizing text, both fiction and nonfiction. Together we summarized King of the Parking Lot, and then students broke into pairs to summarize either Skeletons Inside and Out or Movers and Shapers. We focused on selecting only the most important details, including key words from the story, and incorporating transitions in order to compose a fluid piece of writing. We will share these Monday, and I can't wait to hear them!

Unit 3 in math is HEAVY in fractions. We have worked extensively on identifying and creating equivalent fractions, converting tenths to decimals, and relating fractions to tenths and hundredths. Below we are playing a game called Fraction Match, which is a lot like Uno...only you lay cards based on the same denominator or being equivalent rather than being the same color or number!

These two were GREAT helpers...they went through all my place-value manipulative boxes and reorganized them. Super helpful!!! Thanks, boys!!!