Summer Reading

Wow! A few of you have already started to respond to the prompts. I am super impressed with your excitement for keeping up with your reading over the summer. In the responses I received, I heard all about students' plans for summer reading. One student said they plan to read in the car when heading out on long car trips! What a great idea!

Let me tell you all a little bit about my summer reading plans. I have not started reading yet! Over the past two days, I have been preparing for the first few units of math for next year. Tuesday, June 24th will be my first real day of summer vacation, and I plan on spending it by the pool reading. I have so many titles on my list of books to read this summer. Some books I plan on reading are RICBA award nominees for 2015, some professional books about teaching, and some are just for fun books.

Be sure to stop by the blog throughout the summer! I will be updating with my summer reading, sharing some thoughts from your responses, and keeping you up-to-date on anything you may need to know for our exciting 2014-2015 4th grade school year. You can also take a look on the right-hand side of the blog. There you will find some fun and educational websites.

Enjoy!

Partial Quotients

Questions about Partial Quotients? Check out this video!

1. Go to www.learnzillion.com

2. Click "I have a Quick Code" in the top right corner

3. Enter the code: LZ28

4. Enjoy the video!

Does your child need more division practice? They can check out this game: Quotient Cafe

Erosion & Deposition

Over the past two weeks, we have been learning about erosion and deposition. To help the students visualize this concept, they have been building stream-tables. Through inquiry, students have learned that erosion and deposition slowly change the shape of our Earth, unless flood conditions are introduced. When students built a stream-table and introduced flood conditions, they saw that the shape of our Earth rapidly changes.

Today the students posed an investigation question, predicted what would happen, designed their stream-table to help them to investigate the question. After designing the table, the kids ran water through their stream-tables and recorded their results that answer the investigation question they made up. Below you will find picture of the different stream table setups.

Wrestlemania Reading Challenge

I know that a bunch of kids in the class love wrestling. Here is an incentive for them to read! There are even free books!

http://wwereadingsuperstar.com/

Story Elements & Writing Contest!

In the 4th grade curriculum, students are required to use specific details from a fictional story to describe in-depth a character, setting and events(CCSS 4.RL.). In order to describe in-depth, students need to have a deep understanding of these story elements, and how the elements help to develop a story. Students are also required to write stories using clear sequence of events and descriptive details (CCSS W.4.3). What better way to combine these two standards (along with several other Speaking & Listening and Language standards) than to have a contest?!

This is where Scholastic, and famous authors Dav Pilkey and Jeff Kinney come in! Scholastic.com is sponsoring a contest for students to finish a story mash-up that Pilkey and Kinney started. Here is the link for the contest: http://www.scholastic.com/kpwebcast/

Link to materials: http://www.scholastic.com/kpwebcast/pdf/kinney_pilkey_story_smashup.pdf

Happy New Year

I can't believe it is already January, and we are almost half-way through the year! In an effort to involve the parents in the credit/debit behavior system we use in our classroom, I have started to use ClassDojo.

Your child has probably showed you a paper with a code for you to sign up for the parent reports. I highly recommend signing up. You will be able to check your child's behavior at any time.  For example at 10:30 a.m. you could login to ClassDojo, and see how your child's day going. I also think it is a great way to start conversation about how your child's school day was. When I was a kid and my parents asked me how my day was, my usual answer was "good." Hopefully ClassDojo will allow you to point out parts of the day where he or she was doing well or had some difficulty and hopefully get them to elaborate on it.

As always feel free to e-mail me with any questions.

ClassDojo Parent 101

Chapter Summary and Reflex Math

Due to Winter Break, I am not requiring students to complete Reflex Math and a chapter summary this week. There are several students who "owe" me Reflex or a summary from last week, and they are being asked to complete it. If you would like to know if your child owes either a summary or Reflex, you can e-mail me: grocciak@bsd-ri.net.