Reading Vocabulary

     In reading today, we focused on using precise vocabulary instead of vague vocabulary.  Students rotated through ten stations, using a word bank to choose the best word to complete the sentence.  There was lots of great discussion!

Do You Hear What I Hear?

          We conducted an experiment to test how sound is affected by different materials and how it travels through different materials.  We tested plastic, wood, water, cardboard, and air.  We discovered the loudest sound came through water and that is because sound travels through water the fastest.

Girls Middle School Basketball

          We have a couple ladies from our class that plays on the middle school girl's basketball team.  I got to catch a few minutes of their winning game!  I was so proud of them!

Multiplication Story

To increase the amount of literacy we are exposed to each day, we are trying to tie it into everything we do.  We are reading this story this week in math and discussing how it relates to multiplication.

Feel the Vibe

          We created some makeshift instruments to test the "vibes".  Students stretched two different types of rubberbands at different lengths to see the different in the vibrations and the sound that was created when the band was plucked.

Sound Waves

          We created an example of sound waves for high and low pitch sounds using bells.  The top represented the larger bell, which created a sound wave with frequencies further apart because of the vibrations.  The higher pitched bell would have a wave more like the bottom example.  (We used pipe cleaners for this task.)

Sweet Water Music

          We added water to these jars to create different pitches.  We discussed why some jars had lower or higher pitches than others.  This is something you can try at home too.  We just added some food coloring to each jar for fun!

Ice Cream- You Scream

          Last week, I got to attend a great professional development session where we received mini iPads and some sensory devices for science.  We made ice cream in a bag and got to record data using our new resources!  We will being completing some of these tasks in Studio 214 in the near future!

Guest Spearker about Bullying

          Ms. Sandy, our school guidance counselor, came to speak yesterday to our class about bullying.  This week is "Safe Schools" Week and we have been discussing a lot how to stop bullying and what bullies do or look like.  FRYSC gave each student a water container, shown above, and the kids love them!

Jr. Achievement with First and Farmers

          Ms. Amisha came to Studio 214 today to begin Jr. Achievement with us and it will last five weeks.  She will work with us to help us better understand economics, including goods and services and to create businesses.  We are so excited!

Science Court- Not Guilty

          We love Science Court in Studio 214 because students each get a character from the DVD and must work together to come up with a verdict for the day's lesson.  The videos are really funny too, but the coolest part is they tie directly to what we are learning in class and has great experiments!

You Said What?

          We were testing objects to see what types of sounds they create and why.  We got a little tickled with the balloons!

A Slinky, A Slinky

          In science, we have been studying how sound is created.  Ask your child about why we used a slinky model in class!

Kid Friendly Career Survey

          Visit the link below to take a survey for careers- click on the highlighted words that say "Paws in Jobland".  This is a kid-friendly site that will help narrow down the career domain each student likes the best by anwering some easy questions! 

          Students will be given recording sheets to record their information and explore jobs with their favorite career domain in the computer lab this week.  What do you want to be when you grow up?


http://www.schcounselor.com/2010/03/fun-and-interactive-career-interest.html

"Nominations" and "Flip the Sign"

 

          A couple of years ago, I was following a teacher's blog and he had a morning routine of morning nominations and "flipping the sign".  We sing this to the "Celebrate Good Times" song.  Nominations is where you can nominate a person for something kind they have done for someone else and or just a random act of kindness someone has seen them do, like helping someone find something or picking up things they dropped.  We also "flip the sign" and our sign has our class motto on it and we want to start the day off with the right focus and with the "end in mind".

Our Class Song!

        Here is a video of just the students singing our class song!  They sound so good and make me so proud!  (We changed the words to match our motto and what we want to accomplish this year in fourth grade and it is sung to Katy Perry's song "Roar".)

Sound = Vibrations

          We did an exploratory experiment today, where students had to use a ruler to observe and listen to what happened as they made it vibrate against the desk.

Arrays

          We created arrays today using beans in honor of the opera we are watching on Thursday, "Jack and the Beanstalk".  We discussed how repeated addition and arrays are ways to model multiplication in different ways.