A productive week!

This week was very productive, it was also our first week of the SBAC assessment.  All students in this class took this task very seriously and really worked hard to be diligent during this assessment.

Also, this afternoon you will have a conference schedule in your Friday Folder.  We have been reflecting on our work this year, and practicing presenting claims and evidence to one another in preparation for our student led conferences.  Please remember that your student will be coming with you for these conferences, and they will take about 30 minutes.  If you still need to add your name to the schedule, please just choose a time that has fewer than four families on it, and I will do my best to get you that time.  Please note, that at this point Monday timeslots are "closed."

As usual we will end this update with some authentic reflections from the students.

This week we did some Sbacs. In the morning we did some in the morning we stopped at question 25 and then in the afternoon, we did the rest and there was 43 questions.  We did more Sbacs on Thursday.

This week he have parent teacher conferences I am sharing my math my writing my reading. I think they'll love it. I am going to do my best.

I had lots of fun this week because of the 2 stars and a wish I, think that it was fun doing that because I was really thinking of   what I wanted to put on the computer.   I am also excited about the  book  trailer  because  me and Wyatt  are going to  do Revolutionary War on Wednesday.    I am pumped up because we have it all figured out.

This week has been awesome but my favorite day was thursday!  I was so happy on thursday morning, I discovered how to play “Hot Cross Buns”  on the ukulele!  I can't wait to learn some more songs.  On Thursday I also started a project with Greta in library, were making a book trailer.   And today Friday I have been having a good day so far.  So by, by, it was nice to talk.  I didn’t have a lot to say this week.

This past week, we had sbacs Wednesday and Thursday, and I think I did really well. First of all, on Monday I skipped school so I thought I would miss sbacs, but then, when I got back on Tuesday, I notest it started on Wednesday. I think my favorite day was Thursday because first we got band, and we completed more of the piece we are playing, “Prelude and Allegro”, and second, Madyson and I are partners for a book trailer in Library, and we are doing the book called “Sisters”  by Raina Telgemeier and we are off to a really good start! We are going to use ourselves for the pictures. (Madyson is Raina because she looks older and has dark hair, and I have blond hair like Amara and I look younger.) We also did some sbacs that day too and I think I did better than on Wednesday!

Thursday rocked!  Happy Easter! :)


Have a restful and relaxing weekend.

-Dave

Another great week!

We had another great week this week!  A few of our ranks suffered some injuries last weekend, but all have returned to our midst.  This week we have been working in small writing groups, learning different approaches to reading historical fiction, practicing division with 2 digit dividends and 1 digit divisors.

This week you will notice that your student is bringing home a sign-up sheet for conferences.  Please return these at your nearest convenience so I can get everything scheduled.  These conferences will be student led, so your student will be coming with you, and giving you the information about their progress.  In this set-up there will be multiple conferences happening at once, with a bit of time at the end for you to check in privately with me, as well as to do some quiet reflection to share with your student about your experience.

Authentic reflections from the week:

This week I have been waiting for Mister Willard and Miss Arlyn to make a speed contraption to test our ramps and skateboards in a, good way.  In writing I have been focusing on elaboration  and cause and effect.  At recess we have been playing football with 5 graders and the 6 graders.  In Literacy we have been reading Little House in the Big Woods separate and misster Willard has been reading us Turtle of Oman and we just finished it on 3-17-16.

This week we did another division test but we did not get timed we just did it with some math tools.   Then when we were done with it we would tell Mr. Willard and then he would tell us to check it.  Then when we were done with checking it we would go and give it to Mr.Willard and then he will check it and then if all 56 of them were right then we will have some chose reading or to read the book called Little House In The Big Woods and if you are done with that you might have to do some choice time.

This week, in math, we were counting by 4’s,6’s and 8’s (to help with division.) I also had the chair!

This week we worked on counting by 4’s,6’s,and 8’s. In reteach this week we reflected on how we were kind honest and honorable with our actions.  We also did a lot of writing this week like writing in cursive  and you were also allowed to write normal.My favorite parts about this week are:

1.writing in cursive

2.hanging out with friends

3.learning all I can

So that’s the week talk to ya next time!

Have a restful and relaxing weekend!

Dave

I just realized...

...that a few (three to be exact) of our past pages, I created as a draft, used to make the hard copies of the reader, but failed to publish the pages.  So I have just published these old pages a bit late, so you will see some post from February.  Sorry about the oversight there.

Dave

Lots of things are happening!

We have a lot of things happening in 4th grade right now.  We are steaming forward with our genealogy work.  Everyone in here is working extremely hard on this work, and we are looking forward to seeing everyone here for the showcase of learning that will happen on Feb. 17th!

We also have a food drive that is being put on by the student leadership team:

Food Drive!

The EMES Student Leadership Team is sponsoring a food drive to benefit the East Montpelier Community Food Shelf. The drive will take place from February 1-12, 2016. All students and their families are welcome, and encouraged to donate food to this important cause. 

All non-perishable foods are acceptable.  Some of the most needed items are: rice, tuna, peanut butter, boxes of pasta, canned soup, and applesauce. 

As usual I will round out this update with some authentic student reflections:

Today was sad because we had inside recess because it was wet out so we couldn't go outside today.  

We worked hard on writing about our person we are researching.

What I loved so much about this week is genealogy.  I loved genealogy so much because I was so into the person that I am studying.  Also because I really loved writing about her, researching her, and getting to know her more.  This week was very fun.

Every Tuesday we always do winter wellness and I did cross country skiing and it was very fun this week. I did not do cross country skiing because at morse farm there was not a lot of snow so we did not go cross country skiing so I did snowshoeing and that was very fun but there was  not a lot of snow so I just keep on going but that was a lot of work and a lot of pressure and a lot of trails we went on with out of a lot of snow but it was still a lot of fun and a lot of exciting parts and that was afun Tuesday.

This week we are doing genealogy a lot because we are studying somebody in your family. We have gone to web sites like ancestry.   Today we are putting some documents in  are binders.

This week we have really dug deep in our genealogy research. We have looked at census records, written google docs, and tried to save some images that connected to our discoveries. I have found out a lot and I am working on some different subjects that connect to my person. His name is Vladimir Rosing. I have found out the small important things about him like,

-he was born in 1890

-he died 1963

-he was an Opera singer

But I have also uncovered some more private stuff like marriage and his jobs and other important stuff like that.

This week we have been working on our genealogy. Im working on my gratgrapa who fought in ‘world war two. we have also had 2 indoor recesses this week.

This week was good we did some genealogy which is fun. Tuesday we went alpine skiing. We had a lot of fun on the trails, but not all the trails were open that day. Math is fun too we are learning more skills for division problems to make us more fluent with division so it will be easier to do. Library is fun, because we are making special places movie. That means that we are making a movie of 5 things that we would miss in Vermont. I am almost dun with it, I just have to get my photos that I used to make it.

This week was very special we did a lot of cool stuff.   We did and lots of research on our  people I did Papa Ransom.   I have a book that my nana made well he was in the war.   It is very cool I brought it to school and it has lots of images of him in the desert storm war that was a big war!   We also did a lot of learning and ps I was not here on monday or last tuesday or this tuesday because i had pink eye that was something that made me mad!   I did not go to school because I  did not want other people to get pink eye it is very contagious!   Also WE ARE GETTING OUT ON A FRIDAY!   I also figured that my papa's dad was in world war 2!   That must of gave him confidence.

Have a great weekend!

-Dave

An excellent and exciting week working up to February Break!

We have had another excellent week.  Students have been working on checking their own work in math, creating informational pieces of writing, and finishing and showing off work from our genealogy unit.  First off, thanks so much for those of you who could make it to our celebration of learning.  It was so nice to see so many of you here, and to see the pride of workmanship displayed by our students.  Everyone took such ownership of their work, and many made some really cool discoveries!

We will be continuing our work with division throughout the coming months.  We have been working on mastering the different parts of division and getting a strong handle on all of the prerequisite skills for doing it.  Recently we have spent our time talking about the progression of mastering division, which hinges on the following notions; repeated subtraction, the inverse of multiplication, arrays, and finally the area model.  As we work with these we are working on recording our work to illuminate our thinking for others, as well as, checking our work using whichever of these models makes sense to do so.

As usual I will wrap up this post with some authentic student reflections:

This week we had a museum walk.  I forgot my binder at home so I had to go without  people looking at it was about my gram and I was very excited about doing my gram.

This week we were focused on scrap booking on our  binders.   But that was only the beginning  beginning of the week.   We were done in a short  amount of time.    We worked very hard on the them so we brought our parents in to show them the hard work that we have done.   I did Papa Ransom and the story of him in the Desert Storm War.    I  picked him to let people know how much hard work he did.   This week was pretty AWESOME!    O and I forgot to tell you FEBUARY BRAKE!

This week we showed our genealogy work. We also have been writing  some non-Fiction books I am doing mine about baseball. I am almost don with my piece!

There was a lot of things that I liked about this week, but some of the main things are as follows: I liked genealogy this week because we presented them, and I got to bring it home. I also liked open house this week, because I got to show my parents my wevideo (witch I improved a lot on) and my art.  

Have a fun and relaxing break!

-Dave

Our first full week back

On our first full week back we have been extremely productive.  We are in a cursive immersion, so much of the writing we are doing is in cursive.  This is the first time I have done cursive as an immersion, and we are also working on creating an atmosphere of Zen around our cursive work.  We have a few tenets that we try to stick to when writing in cursive, the most important one of which is "be relaxed."

In math we are continuing our work with division.  This week we have been working on digging deeper into division that has 2 digit dividends and one digit divisors.  We are practicing mastering different families of these by making models of them, and using the models to see the dividend, divisor, and quotient.  These models are made with cuisenaire rods...



...these models both have an area of 30.  And they both can be used to understand 30/5 or 30/6.  Check in with your student for an explanation of how to use these to find the quotient.

We are also beginning a unit on historical fiction and our text for this is The Little House in the Big Woods.  This is one of my favorites, and is os interesting as it has lots of unique information,  and tiny but important details.

Authentic reflections from the week:

This week we have been reading historical fiction, and thinking about things like: what is true in the book, how does the character’s world influence their actions thoughts and feelings, and how you can get a lot of information from the small details. We have been testing these questions on the book The Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

This week in reateach we are seeing how much our ( Hughes and I) bombing plane costs. It is hard to do it because it is so big and there are lots of contacts. In math we are working on division problems. And in pe we are doing floor hockey, or we might be doing a new subject in pe. We are working on some cursive. Typing club is fun to, because we are working to make our typing faster and more fluent than a couple years ago.  

This week we worked on my favorite thing writing in cursive!  My favorite part about writing in cursive is that you get to see how fast you can get at it.  Another thing we did was make ramps and put little skateboards down it and see how fast it went and how long it goes.    And the way you make it go longer is to have it go down on to a flat surface.

This week was a nice and good week. On Monday we had extra art, Tuesday we didn’t have band, but at music we watched a cool video. On Wednesday we got candy in Library from a game (I got grape taffy.) On Thursday also in Library I made a collage about Sidi in the Turtle of Oman on my chromebook, and we also had a great band after that, then on Friday, today, we are going to have P.E. at 12:40 and I think we are going to play floor hockey! Also, after school my cousin is going to be at my house at 6:00 and I can hardly wait!

Have a restful and relaxing weekend,

Dave

Weekly update!

After a refreshing break, we got right back to the tasks at hand.  We are beginning to immerse ourselves in cursive...this will be a focus for us until the April break.  I call this cursive immersion because students will be working at the pace that is most comfortable for them.  For this immersion we are also practicing the art of Zen and cursive.  We are working really hard to get our mindset open to see what we already know about cursive, which will allow us to see our success with cursive.  On our first days everyone created cursive writing, and zero students felt a failure!

We are also starting a mini-unit on energy and motion.  For this work we will be using min-skateboards and inclined planes.  We will design these inclined planes to do two different things, maximize distance and maximize speed.  We will also be making conjectures about how energy relates to speed, and hopefully designing and using a speed-trap to measure the speed of our mini-skateboards.

Here are some authentic reflections from the week:

This week I was very proud of my partner  and the whole class for succeeding in the  skateboard challenge to see how far the skateboard can go.   A lot of people made awesome  ramps  and the rampes worked to.   Our  ramp  went very far.    It was a short week with a lot of cool stuff and  I am excited to be back.

This week we worked in discovery and my partner was Eliza and she had  a lot of good ideas and we had some wood and some ramps and a skateboard and I had a good idea because my idea was to make the make the beginning of the ramp high and then we had a ruler at the end of the ramp and then the skateboard will jump the ruler and then that was a long ride for that little skateboard.

This week we worked with cursive writing and ramps and I learned that friction is the reason there is fire when the astronauts come down from outer space.  This week we also did cursive like I said earlier and if your come it is so much easier and by the way when you write cursive you might want to know this slow makes fast.  Well that's the week. Bey bey!

(In this awesome week of  school.) Well maybe not a week of school. How about three days of school. We just got back to vacation we have been working on our math. And the new exciting thing we have been doing in class is energy and motion. Yesterday 3/3/16 we were working with  little tiny  skateboards to see how much energy they get to go down the ramp

I hope you have a restful and enjoyable weekend!

-Dave