Science Lab- Biodegradable Bouncy Ball

Today the science lab arrived at our school and all fourth grade students had the opportunity to review natural resources and create a biodegradable bouncy ball!  It was super cool!

Once students mixed the ingredients listed above, they added food coloring and placed their open zip log bag in the microwave for thirty seconds.  Then the bag was put into a container of ice water to cool.  Next the students got to take the plastic out of the bag and squish it into the shape of a ball, getting all the air bubbles out.  After ten hours, their plastic will harden and make a bouncy ball.  We used a variable with the corn oil- some students used 4 drops, 6 drops, and 8 drops, and we are going to test them on Friday to see which type of ball bounces higher.  We will use that data to create a bar graph to display our data and make a claim!

Structuring Opinion Paragraphs

We are working hard on learning how to create good, solid paragraphs when writing an opinion piece.  We are focusing this week on the topic sentence, three supporting details/reasons, and a conclusion sentence.  Yesterday, students had five sentences of a paragraph and had to decide together how to put the sentences in order to make the best paragraph.  Students then decided also were there other option for the sentence order and why.  Today, students will have a topic and will create their own paragraphs on green, yellow, and red sentence strips.  The green strip is for the topic sentence, the yellow is for the supporting details and the red is for the conclusion sentence so they have a visual of what they are creating.

Creative Writing in Science

Fourth grade students are creating a book about fossils, using the rubric as their guide.  We brainstormed the first day our ideas and students began creating their stories yesterday and we will publish them throughout the week.  This is a great way for me to check and see also if students understand how a living thing becomes a fossil!

Bloom's Taxonomy

Our Superintendent sends out a focus each week with great resources we can quickly use in our classroom to enhance classroom instruction and improve student learning.  This week, he shared this site for Bloom's Taxonomy and it is amazing!

http://www.schrockguide.net/bloomin-apps.html



I especially love this idea with using buttons for Blooms!

http://totallyterrificintexas.blogspot.com/2012/12/blooms-buttons.html?showComment=1356189282103#c3293790253398616113

Paleontologist for the Day

Our fourth grade students were paleontologists for a day and completed their first fossil mapping and fossil dig!  We dug the "fossils" with our toothpicks to show students how careful you must be when extracting fossils from the Earth.  Many of our fossils did not make it out of the ground in one piece!

Career Day- Dress Up

We had over half our class dress up as their future careers and they were so cute!

Career Day Guest Speaker

We had an awesome guest speaker this week- Ms. Judy Tallent!  She is the director for the Albany Learning Center, affiliated with the Somerset Community College.  She described what is available to students if they would like to attend their first two years of college there and encouraged them to choose something that they love as their future career!

Career Week Door Decorations

This week is career week at CCES and students worked on Habit 2: Beginning with the end in mind by thinking about what they want to be when they grow up and where they will go to school.  We took cap and gown pictures and they were so cute!

 

 

Halloween Creative Writing Task

Last week before Halloween, we did this as a creative writing task, where students had to come up with a costume idea and draw the body with my head.  They turned out really funny!

 

 



BMX Show

The BMX show was so amazing today and tied in to what we are studying this week with careers and how to set goals for our future!  The riders asked for three volunteers, so Ms. Kassie, Ms. Mandi, and I volunteered for their stunt!  It was a little scary!

 

 

 

Clock Partners

We finally have our clock partners on our desk!  This is a cool way for our class to have different partners all over the room and I just call out, "Let's meet with your 6 o'clock partner" and students will meet up with that person.  I also fixed it so that the 9 o'clock partner uses a symbol so I can use it in my other two science classes!  The star in the center of each clock is even color coded so that we have five different groups throughout the room.