Class Picture

Our class group pictures are in and will be sent home on Monday in your child's take home folder.  (I took a picture of one of them with my phone, so that is why you see a glare.)  They are a great looking group!

KET Young Writers

These students participated in the KET Young Writers contest where they wrote and illustrated their own short stories.  I am so proud of them for choosing to participate in the contest.  Their stories were very entertaining and imaginative!

Ms. Wanda Visits Our Class

Ms. Wanda from the Soil Conservation Office came to visit this afternoon to discuss the importance of Earth Day and had a fun task to complete with the students that reviewed the life cycle of a plant.  We appreciate all our community members who volunteer their time to come speak to our students!

Vascular and Nonvascular

Friday morning...

Friday afternoon...

Today, we started an experiment to further discuss vascular and nonvascular plants.  This experiement demonstrates how liquids flow through the tubes of the stem up to the leaves and flower.  I can't wait to see what the flowers will look like when we return on Monday!

Measuring Angles

This morning we worked on measuring and then creating angles using protractors.  Our first task was to use a protractor to create specific angles.  Once students had mastered that concept, we took it a step further to create an illustration, realistic or abstract, and then they had to idenitfy the angles in it and label them.  Take a look at a couple of their work samples.

Stars in Studio 214

Here is a class picture from today with all twenty-five students present!  I always get a little sentimental as the school year nears the end.  They are a great group of kids and I have enjoyed having them in class!

Ribbon Cutting for CCES Courtyard

This morning we had our ribbon cutting for our courtyard!  This project has been a lot of fun and we have learned so much.  We are very thankful to all the people and organizations who donated time and or money to the project!

"Jump On It"- Circles

I was recently able to attend the KCM Math Conference in Lexington, KY. The information learned at the conference was invaluable and I'm so thankful for the opportunity!

One of the things we learned was how to use pop culture more in our everyday lessons. A suggestions was showing the following clip and then learning about circles and the measurement of circles. Watch the following video from youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7h-2UmHuxQ
and then check out our kids and what we learned this week. I guarantee any student in Studio 214 could tell you how many degrees are in a circle- they may even break out in a flash mob!

"Kids Helping Kids" Courtyard Project- Final Stages

We are in the final stages of our courtyard project! Last week, the plants were planted and the stumps were removed and it looks completely different. This week, Mr. Willen's class constructed a frame to cover an opening. This is going to be used to store our garden tools. We are waiting for the Spiral Spruce to be delivered because we had to special order it. We will be hosting a ribbon cutting at 8:30, Friday morning to officially dedicate the courtyard to all the students at CCES!

Matthew- Book Talk

Matthew completed a book talk on a one of his favorite Dairy of a Wimpy Kid books- check it out at our library!

April 17- Blog Reporter Studio 214

Maleigha reported on happenings in Studio 214 last week- we sure had a lot going on!

"Kids Helping Kids" Courtyard Project

The planting is almost finished now, thanks to our high school and fourth grade students! The courtyard is really shaping up and I was so proud of all of them. The pictures above were some of the shots from today's work! We are planning a celebration day for Earth Day next week to dedicate our courtyard and to say thank you to everyone who helped make our project happen!

Creating Rulers- Van de Wall Strategy

This morning we created our own units of measurement and pasted them to a "ruler". Students named their units and broke them down into fractional parts. We used the units to measure three items and recorded our data in our science and math journals. Once we measured our items, we then glued the units to the ruler.

The book "Teaching Student-Centered Mathematics" by John A. Van de Walle, is a great resource that focuses more on conceptual understanding of content, rather than only procedural computations. The book includes many hands-on tasks where students discover how to arrive at an answer and the process really shows their true understanding of the concept. We use these types of tasks and have "Number Talks" where students explain how they arrived at an answer. It's great to hear their different explanations and how they got their answers and we all learn from each other!

Area and Perimeter- Real World Measurement

Fourth grade students worked together with the high school students today to find the perimeter and area of one of our largest flower bed spaces in the courtyard. Using tape measures, they worked in small groups to measure the area. They measured using inches and had to convert to feet.

We also had a reporter from the Kentucky Teacher publication visiting today while we were in working in the court yard. She was here to interview Ms. Braber about the Osprey web cam that fourth grade has been using to observe the Osprey birds living at Lake Barkley and came outside to see our project. The article will be published in May.

Sum-Dog KY Math Contest

The state of Kentucky is having a statewide math contest starting April 16-April 20. Visit the site below to log in and start playing! The site has math games focusing on number and operations for grades K-8. Be sure to play everyday for your chance to win great prizes!

http://www.sumdog.com/sch/cumberland_9

Courtyard Planting!

Today the high school students visited us again and began planting some of the shrubs. It is really looking good! Tomorrow they are going to pair up with our fourth grade kids and teach them how to find the perimeter and area of some of the different spaces we are working on, which ties directly into our fourth grade math standards. On Thursday, we will help them finish planting and cleaning up the area.

Courtyard Demolition has begun!

Well the demolition has begun! We had some special helpers during spring break that trimmed the trees for us and the high school FFA students along with Mr. Willen came today to clean the up area and prepare it for planting. We will be having some measurement lessons this week being taught by the high school students to our fourth graders where they will go out and measure the landscaping areas to see how many plants we will need. How about that for some real-world connections on measurement and symmetry! Planting will begin soon- stay tuned!

Animal Adaptations Science Experiment

Welcome back from spring break! We have started off the week in a race to the finish. Today in science, we completed a task to discover why some birds have different shaped beaks and learned about animal adaptations and environments. After our task, we checked the Osprey Webcam for an update and three eggs have been laid!