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.

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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!!!