Beautiful Gift!

I received some beautiful flowers today for Easter- thank you!  It really brightened my day- I just love new plants for our classroom and we will use it for discussion during our next science unit- World of Living Things!

Egg Drop

Brandon's egg wasn't too lucky!

 

 

Katelyn used peanut butter and it worked!

 

 

          We had our annual fourth grade egg drop today, right before Easter!  Students had to complete the scientific method with this project by hypothesizing what they think could happen using certain materials and then they had to design their "egg vehicle" to protect the egg during the "mission".  We had many survivors and some others who were not so lucky!

Let there be light!

          Yesterday is science, we completed some light stations to test out different light concepts.  We tested what would happen when we looked at convex and concave objects, reflections, and refractions.  We also practiced making some different shadow puppets and thought about why we have shadows and what happens when the sun moves across the sky- where does our shadow go and how does it change? 

Convex Image- looks like a reflection...

 

Concave Image- what happened?

Reflection Symmetry

We're testing objects to see whether they are opaque, transparent, or transluscent.

 

We used a light source to create different types of shadows on the wall.

 

 

 

Give One- Get One Strategy

          I love this strategy for video clips because students are engaged throughout the entire video clip.  Their job is to record as many facts as possible.  For each fact, they get a point.  After the video, they share with a partner.  If they have any facts that their partner does not have, they get another point.  Under the "Give One" column, students write any new facts they may get from their partner.  It's a great discussion starter for the content from the clip and it's a fun little game!  This video was from science and we made a t-chart in our science journals to record our information.

Text Structure Gallery Walk

         

 

          We completed a gallery walk yesterday on text structures.  Students worked in groups to read six different passages to decide how the paragraph was structured- cause and effect, sequencing, problem/solution, compare and contrast, or description.  They then had to justify their answers by finding proof in the passage.  I heard some great conversations because some of the passages were a little tricky!

Famous American Biographies

Can you guess who these people are?

 

 

 

          We have been learning about text structures and text features in Studio 214 and this week we began research on a famous American.  Students could choose a person to research and we have used print and non-print resources.  We gathered our information and then wrote rough drafts of a biography.  Today we have published our biographies after we conferenced yesterday and we are creating posters of our famous Americans.  For their posters, we took a headshot of each student for the head of their famous American.  (We borrowed the idea from another school and I thought it was too cool!)  Students are including text features on their posters using pictures, captions, timelines, diagrams, and titles, to name a few of the features.  This has been a fun project and students have learned so much!

Studio 214 Harlem Shake

          We did the Harlem Shake today in Studio 214 to celebrate each student that made an improvement on their scores from the last PAS test.  In order to participate, students had to show improvement on two of the three tests that we took.  Four students chose to get into the treasure chest instead of dancing, so you don't see them.  I had just restocked the treasure chest and there were some really cool things in there!