Room 4P

We are off to a great start to a new school year!  In addition to learning all about our school and classroom community, we have jumped right into reading, math and science!

In science, we created display boxes and ID cards for our rock specimens.  Then we carefully observed and drew our rocks. Next week we will begin to learn how to do scientific property tests on rocks and minerals.

In math, we started our first unit, Math in Everyday Life. I can’t believe how many examples of math in everyday life the students came up with! As a class, we also brainstormed as many math vocabulary words as we could. We came up with at least 50! After reading the book, Math Curse, we solved some of the problems in the book.

In reading, we are enjoying reading about Nolan’s secret identify in the book Shredderman. We have all found great books to read during Independent Reading Time. Each day we have tried to read just a bit longer. We are already up to 20 minutes! We have met in our first Buzz Group, sharing our books and filling in our Someday Read lists.

We are learning that we have a class full of diverse interests and talents! Jack entertained us with his stories about his wonderful collection of sea glass. Jaclyn educated us with her knowledge of rocks. Xandra’s walking stick bug was amazing to observe in the environment that she made for it. Alex wowed us with her one hour Ugly Doll creation! Amanda has shown her leadership skills through her idea to beautify the playground. Claire gave us a glimpse at San Fransisco when she shared her San Fransisco mementos and stories.

It has only been three days and we have already learned and accomplished so much. I can’t wait for next week!

Hello 4P Students and Families!

Are you ready for an exciting year in 4th grade? I sure am! I am looking forward to seeing you on September 1st. Although our day is going to be busy with learning about your new school and classroom, we will certainly find time to do some math, reading and science! Our special on the first day is P.E. with Mr. Duffy.

Please remember to bring your Connecticut rock (I am bringing mine!) and your healthy snack. It looks like we may have some hot weather next week, so bring a water bottle and dress cool.

I will meet you in the gymnasium first thing Wednesday morning.

See you soon,
Mrs. Pilver

We had an exciting last week of school! Monday we “buried” our time capsule. We had a ceremony during which each class took turns sealing up their precious memories of 4th grade.

Tuesday we finished up our CT Contributor project. Students did a wonderful job creating Magtoos and Blabberizes to add to the wiki pages.

We ended the day watching Hall Idol. 4P is so proud of Abigail and Carly’s singing performance. The judges said that they were amazing and we agree!

Wednesday was Nature Day. After learning  how to bird watch, we walked on the Nature Trail. We observed and collected so many treasures! We discovered insects, interesting plants, signs of animal life, and signs of erosion and lightning strikes. Like Austin said, “I didn’t know nature could be so cool!” After lunch we had fun observing our findings under the microscope and the computer probe.  We also made crafts with or (as in Zach and Liam’s case) for our nature items.

We celebrated the last day of school with the Hall Memorial School success assembly and the movie classic, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

I have had a wonderful year in 4P with a group of  incredible students. Have a great summer!

4P is so proud of the Top10 commercials that we made for the Morning News. We created the commercials on Tuesday and we viewed them on the school morning news show Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Everyone loved the bloopers we added to the Most Amazing Ocean Animal commercial. We have had lots of people voting this week. Please remember to cast your vote at http://top10.sblc.wikispaces.net/

We have been working hard at our research for the Connecticut Contributor wiki. This week we learned how to find primary source documents and we’ve been collecting those for a timeline of CT history. We are discovering that many of the CT people we are researching knew each other! Some of us have started to type into the wiki this week.

We’ve finished our Triple A news articles for the Connecticut wiki. You can view them here,

We’ve started to learn about Forces and Motion in science. Friday we started to learn about Simple Machines with a game called Twitch. We love Twitch. Click here to play the game.

Our book clubs have been fun. Mrs. Pilver is going to video tape some groups who are really good at having book discussions. Next week is our last week of book clubs.

We are almost done with our read aloud, The Thing About Georgie. Most of us agree that this is one of the best books we’ve read this year!

In math, we are learning how to find area of rectangles and triangles. Did you know that when you measure the area of a triangle you can use any side as a base?

We have had another busy week! I can’t believe that there are less than 25 days left of school. We have started to collect items for our Time Capsule.  We are going to bury it on June 8th. Students will be making artifacts in school and have been asked to bring in things from home as well. They might want to bring in photographs, ticket stubs, brochures, letters, collector cards, and anything else that captures their lives right now.

In Social Studies, we have been researching famous Connecticut people who have made a contribution. We created a bulletin board with the map of Connecticut counties, Connecticut symbols and places to visit.

In math we have been working on geometry. We’ve learned how to find the area of irregular shapes, how to identify congruent shapes and the parts of a circle.

We are enjoying our book clubs with Mrs. Nyser’s class. We meet two days a week in our book clubs and prepare for our book clubs the other three days. We are learning how to have good discussions and how to write great discussion questions.

Other happenings: We have afternoon jobs and get to clean to our favorite music. Ginger and Oreo like their new guinea pig box that we use when we hold them. No more accidents! We are each planting three sunflower seeds and will transplant them when they get big enough. We ended our week with a pizza party to celebrate the fact that our Top Ten project won an award!

Upcoming Events:

May 26 – Band Concert
June 3 – 3rd Grade Visit
June 7 – Outdoor Lunch
June 8- Time Capsule
June 10 – Chorus Concert
June 14 – Field Day
June 17 – Last Day

We started our Connecticut:  The Contribution State project this week. We’ve been reading about people from Connecticut history who have made contributions to the world, country, or state and are thinking about which person each of us would like to research. We wrote on the wiki discussion tab and are waiting to hear from the fourth grade students in Chaplin Elementary School.

We continued our study of electricity this week. Miss K taught us how a light bulb works. Do you know which part of a bulb lights up?

In math, in addition to practicing money problems, we’ve been learning how to read and write decimal numbers. What numbers do you think will come up on a calculator when you keep on adding .2?

This weekend is the play, Beauty and the Beast. Break a leg Abigail and Carly!

Have a wonderful April vacation! See you in a week.

We started studying the idea of community and discussed ourselves as contributors in our classroom community. We also shared what we needed from our community. We created ZOOM books that zoom in from the Milky Way to our town. Next week we will begin to discuss the ideas with another classroom.

In reading, we are close to finishing Stone Fox. It has been a very good book so far and we recommend it. We are reading fiction books for our podcast book reviews. Today was the closing ceremonies for the Reading Olympics. Liam read the most minutes in our class and received a gift certificate to the book fair. The rest of us received pencils for participating.

In math, we learned how to multiply without expanded form. We thought it was easier than division. Today we started to study decimals and money.

This week we learned about division with remainders. In Science, we have ended our ocean ecosystem unit. We are finishing up our Top Ten wiki. Next week, we will be starting a social studies unit. We are going to be connecting to 4th grade students in from other schools in Connecticut T to learn about  Connecticut people who have made contributions to our town, state, country, and world.

We are reading a book in Reading called Stone Fox. Each day we read one or two chapters.

Oreo and Ginger have learned how to climb on top of their green house! They are getting bigger each day.



Math

In math we are working on long division. We are learning a strategy called stacking.

Students need to continue to practice their multiplication facts but equally important is subtraction facts! We are finding that many of us are having trouble with long division because of the subtraction.

Reading

In reading we are learning how to have literature discussions. We observed some visitors to our class having a book discussion, and we wrote down what we noticed. We turned our observations into a list of Discussion Tips that we are using as we have our own discussions about books.

The book we are all reading and discussing is called Stone Fox.  Stone Fox is about a ten-year old boy named Willy. Willy needs to win the big dogsled race in order to pay the back taxes on his grandfather’s farm, but that means beating the huge mountain man, Stone Fox. We learned a little about the famous dog race in Alaska called the Iditarod and some students are researching more for extra credit.

Writing

We are all publishing a story on the computer that we have written during writing workshop. Some of us are publishing our stories about a magic shop and a magical item we bought in the shop and others are publishing other favorite stories. These will be posted on our wiki. Stay tuned!

We are also very busy publishing our Ocean Animal research on a wiki called the Top Ten.  Each of us have researched either an Amazing or Dangerous ocean animal and we are writing informational reports about each animal. We are learning how to save and insert images, how to cite sources, and how to make hyperlinks.  When the wiki is done, we will let you know so you can see the wonderful work we have all done!

Science

In science, Miss K has been helping us learn about the ocean. We’ve learned about the ocean biome, ocean currents, and what happens when oil is mixed with water. We also created a beautiful ocean mural with information cards of the ocean biomes.

Other

We’ve started something called clubs during our snack time. Groups of us are learning about something that we are interested in and creating a product to show what we have learned. Our clubs are the Scrapbook Club, the Harry Potter Club, The Birds of Prey Club, the Universe Club, the Guinea Pig Club, the Dangerous Machine Club and the Math Club.

Our Mural of the Ocean Biome

EROSION
by Austin

Erosion is when water, wind, and plants eat away at the earth. Do you ever wonder why some rivers are really, really wide?  Rivers get wider because their fast moving water makes the dirt on the sides of rivers fall into the river and it gets carried away downstream. Erosion happens almost everywhere, not just in rivers.  So I bet if you go into the woods or maybe even in your back yard,  you might find erosion.

Here are some examples of erosion that we found behind our school:

Crazy Roots
by Abigail

There is a tree growing on the playground next to the school. Its roots are growing very out of control. The roots are breaking out of the dirt and rather close to the school. I think that  if there wasn’t a foundation,  in many years, the roots could grow under the school. I predict that if the erosion continues, the plants around the tree will die because the roots will take the water and nutrients from the soil. I also think that the main erosion agent is gravity because , the erosion looks very weighed down. The eroded material  is going  down the hill, probably from rain,  because it is pretty much following the dirt, which is the eroded material. A way to stop the erosion is to pack down some heavy dirt or concrete around it.

Showing Roots
by Liam

You can see the roots of the tree above the ground. I think the erosion happened because water and rocks washed away the dirt above and around the roots. I think the eroded material is going to the nearby river and then that material will get washed away. If the erosion continues then I think the roots will detach from the ground causing the tree to fall. I think a good way to stop the erosion would be to get more dirt and pack it down before the roots show.

The Roots
by Dylan

There are roots showing.  The wind is causing dirt to go up in the air. If this keeps happening, the roots will get exposed and the tree will die. The roots are near a tree with the bench attached to it. This is a place were people walk. The wind blows dirt into the air and people trample on the roots which flicks the dirt away which causes erosion. Water carries the dirt away down into the river or other places. Gravity might also eroding it. The dirt gets stuck on the pole of the bench and on peoples shoes. Kids can pat dirt on the roots so the roots will be safe. That’s how we can stop it.

Saving a Tree
By Rian

 There used to be sand on the roots and the sand got pushed away because people walked over it. Rain is pushing the sand down the hill. This is causing the erosion. If the erosion keeps happening the tree might die. If people stop walking on it the tree might live and the roots might go underground or the sand will go on it. Another way to stop the erosion is to put sand on it then not touch it.

Tree Roots
By Max

I think the picture of the tree we took is different than other trees because some of its roots are showing. A way that the erosion is happening is from people trampling on the roots. Another way that the erosion is happening is from water carrying it away to a river. A way to stop the erosion is to build a small wall around the tree roots.

Roots Showing
by Zachary

The tree that is growing is different than other trees. Its roots show. The roots are showing because wind is taking away the dirt, exposing the roots. If this keeps happening the roots will not be attached to the ground and the tree will die. The materials will be carried into the nearby river to be swept away by the water currant. To stop the erosion you could put a metal wall above the hill so it will prevent the water and rock from coming in and taking the dirt into the river. Another example of this type of erosion is when wind caries sand to make dunes for the sand on the dunes to be carried away making lots of dunes.