Greetings,
I don't know about you, but the 4 day weekend could not have come at a better time. Things around the Champion home are kind of crazy (dealing with a little girl who is 4 going on 16, prepping the house for major renovations - new kitchen, 2 new bedrooms, and a new bath, and prepping for the arrival of new baby in about 4 months), so the extra days really helped. Even though it was a short week, I still feel like we got a good bit accomplished. I believe the highlight of the week was our trip to the Warner Park Nature Center. Please check out the slideshow of pictures on the side of the blog. The kids were extremely well-behaved and I think the guides were quite impressed with their knowledge of ecosystems and habitats. The guides did a wonderful job sharing their vast amount of knowledge with the students. If you have never been to the nature center I highly recommend taking the time to visit. Here are some more highlights from this week:
Math
The focus this week has been enrichment. Being that it was a short week, I didn't want to start on any new concepts. The students had fun working on their DynaMath this week. DynaMath is a publication filled with current events. The twist is that the publishers create problem-solving opportunities out of these events. The problems range from relatively simple to quite difficult. The students worked in pairs to complete this activity. We also had a lot of fun working on Math Races. The problems just keep getting, as Sam Strang put it, more and more "elaborate". I feel like the students are getting exposed to some really cool math concepts and I feel that the more exposure they get, the more likely they are to retain these more complex skills.
Science
We have begun, after our terrarium study, our study of specific ecosystems. The first ecosystem we are going to look at is the prairie. I think the kids have really enjoyed the technology connection this week. We will continue to do more with the Build-a-Prairie site next week. I have scheduled computer lab time for both classes in order to complete this project.
Thank you again for all that you do and I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Harris Hillman Visit is Highlight of the Week
It has been a wonderful week. I can't put into words how amazing the experience was that your children and I shared this past Tuesday afternoon. While seeing all of the children with their various disabilities was eye-opening, the empathy and compassion shown by the students was a beautiful thing to see. The performances the kids put together were awesome and please take a moment to check them out on the posts below this one. You may also check out Mrs. Earhart's performances on her blog. Here are the rest of the highlights for this week:
MATH:
We did a bit of review this week. We also added a new dimension to our daily Math Races. For those of you that don't know, Math Races is a daily activity that has turned out to be a excellent extension of our math curriculum. The way it works is that the students are asked to come up with a phrase, equation, or other representation where the value is equal to the date (i.e. all of today's values were 16). They then have 5 minutes to, taking turns, write as many of those expressions on the board as they can. The kids have gone from just using basic addition and subtraction problems, to using multiplication, variables, square roots, parentheses, exponents, division, and more. This week we added a data analysis to Math Races. Once the time limit is up, I go over the problems and discuss the more difficult ones. Then I count how many each side got correct. Finally, we add the items to a data set. The students then find the mean, median, mode, and range of that data set. The kids enjoy the competition aspect as well as investigating the data sets. It is a good time.
SCIENCE
We wrapped up our terrarium study this week. The kids had a blast pouring out the terrariums in to foil pans and were pleasantly surprised when they discovered many of their critters were still alive. In fact, some of the isopods (pill bugs) had multiplied since the beginning of the project. Many fine crickets and a few pill bugs were lost during this project, but I am sure they lived a long and full life up to this point, or at least that is my hope :) Both classes had all of their materials ready to begin their second inquiry project of the year. Unfortunately, yours truly, had the students use too much water on the first day and as a result, the experiments were invalid. However, I am going to gather up some potting soil and cups this weekend and when the students return next Wednesday, we will be ready to restart the experiments in hopes of a more successful outcome.
I hope that everyone has a wonderful Fall Break. Take care!
MATH:
We did a bit of review this week. We also added a new dimension to our daily Math Races. For those of you that don't know, Math Races is a daily activity that has turned out to be a excellent extension of our math curriculum. The way it works is that the students are asked to come up with a phrase, equation, or other representation where the value is equal to the date (i.e. all of today's values were 16). They then have 5 minutes to, taking turns, write as many of those expressions on the board as they can. The kids have gone from just using basic addition and subtraction problems, to using multiplication, variables, square roots, parentheses, exponents, division, and more. This week we added a data analysis to Math Races. Once the time limit is up, I go over the problems and discuss the more difficult ones. Then I count how many each side got correct. Finally, we add the items to a data set. The students then find the mean, median, mode, and range of that data set. The kids enjoy the competition aspect as well as investigating the data sets. It is a good time.
SCIENCE
We wrapped up our terrarium study this week. The kids had a blast pouring out the terrariums in to foil pans and were pleasantly surprised when they discovered many of their critters were still alive. In fact, some of the isopods (pill bugs) had multiplied since the beginning of the project. Many fine crickets and a few pill bugs were lost during this project, but I am sure they lived a long and full life up to this point, or at least that is my hope :) Both classes had all of their materials ready to begin their second inquiry project of the year. Unfortunately, yours truly, had the students use too much water on the first day and as a result, the experiments were invalid. However, I am going to gather up some potting soil and cups this weekend and when the students return next Wednesday, we will be ready to restart the experiments in hopes of a more successful outcome.
I hope that everyone has a wonderful Fall Break. Take care!
Friday, October 9, 2009
Statistics Abound!
Greetings All,
Everyday I am reminded why I am so glad I took the opportunity to teach 4th grade. It is so refreshing to be teaching skills that are new to not only your children, but to me as well. It is a great deal of fun. This week was a perfect example. Mean, median, mode, and range (check out the fun video in the links section) have been the focus of our math work this week. Statistical analysis has always been a fascinating component of mathematics and the students did a wonderful job catching on. We used real data, as well as some fictional data, to help reinforce how to determine mean, median, mode, and range. A highlight of the week was when we had an Ensworth High School student, Noland Moorer, come to visit. He designed two fun math activities for the students. He first played bingo using mental math and then he passed out mini bags of Skittles (a big hit by the way) and had the students do a statistical analysis (finding mean, median, mode, range) of the Skittle colors. They first did this in their small groups and then they worked as a class to do an analysis for the entire class. Finally, yesterday we did some work creating data sets to analyze by rolling dice. One data set was made up of the girls' rolls and the other was made up of the boys' rolls. We did this several times to look for patterns. The students then worked with a partner to create and analyze their own data sets. It was after observing this activity that I felt comfortable assessing them with a small quiz today. The mean of the class scores on the quiz was 88%.
In Science we spent the majority of the week preparing for our next inquiry project. Last week the students worked on their materials list, procedures, and hypotheses. This week they designed ways to record their observations and data. They also brought in all their materials and prepared their containers for planting. On Monday we will plant the seeds and begin observing and recording. I am very interested to see the results of these experiments. I am really proud of how the students have started to apply their science process skills independently.
As I stated in an email sent today, I have sent home a collection of papers with your child today. Please take the time to go over the each paper with your child. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thanks for all that you do and I hope you all have a wonderful and relaxing weekend.
Everyday I am reminded why I am so glad I took the opportunity to teach 4th grade. It is so refreshing to be teaching skills that are new to not only your children, but to me as well. It is a great deal of fun. This week was a perfect example. Mean, median, mode, and range (check out the fun video in the links section) have been the focus of our math work this week. Statistical analysis has always been a fascinating component of mathematics and the students did a wonderful job catching on. We used real data, as well as some fictional data, to help reinforce how to determine mean, median, mode, and range. A highlight of the week was when we had an Ensworth High School student, Noland Moorer, come to visit. He designed two fun math activities for the students. He first played bingo using mental math and then he passed out mini bags of Skittles (a big hit by the way) and had the students do a statistical analysis (finding mean, median, mode, range) of the Skittle colors. They first did this in their small groups and then they worked as a class to do an analysis for the entire class. Finally, yesterday we did some work creating data sets to analyze by rolling dice. One data set was made up of the girls' rolls and the other was made up of the boys' rolls. We did this several times to look for patterns. The students then worked with a partner to create and analyze their own data sets. It was after observing this activity that I felt comfortable assessing them with a small quiz today. The mean of the class scores on the quiz was 88%.
In Science we spent the majority of the week preparing for our next inquiry project. Last week the students worked on their materials list, procedures, and hypotheses. This week they designed ways to record their observations and data. They also brought in all their materials and prepared their containers for planting. On Monday we will plant the seeds and begin observing and recording. I am very interested to see the results of these experiments. I am really proud of how the students have started to apply their science process skills independently.
As I stated in an email sent today, I have sent home a collection of papers with your child today. Please take the time to go over the each paper with your child. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thanks for all that you do and I hope you all have a wonderful and relaxing weekend.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Harris Hillman, Equations, and Crickets - Oh My!
It has been a fun-filled week. The students are super excited about their upcoming trip to Harris Hillman. Any free moment they get, they are getting with their groups to work on their music/dance/skit routines. We have four groups in our class and the songs they have picked are: Smooth Criminal, You Belong with Me, Celebration, and Let's Get Crazy. I will post a slide show with some photos from their practices very soon. The students are welcome to bring props, costumes, etc. to school to help them practice. The students may also need to work together outside of school before the October 13th trip. This is not required, but I have been told that it has been a very common practice in years past. I have made the students aware that they should plan ahead and not try to organize an after school meeting the day of said meeting. Here are the rest of this week's highlights:
Math
As you should know, we have spent this week working with phrases and equations. I LOVE teaching algebra. It is so much fun to isolate variables and balance equations. We did a lot of work with finding the value of phrases and setting up equations to continue patterns. Unfortunately, we were not able to complete the football rankings this week, but they will back next week. Next week we are going to do more work with statistics and learn about mean, median, range, and mode. In addition to the previously mentioned skills, we have also spent some time working on basic facts. I am asking that all students continue to practice their addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts as much as possible. I am adding some new links to the blog. These links are to math sites that might be a fun way for your child to work on their facts. Be sure to check them out.
Science
Crickets were the focus this week. The students did really well creating Venn Diagrams to compare and contrast isopods and crickets. I loved watching how excited they were to observe the crickets through their hand lenses. It was great to see them identifying the parts of the cricket and asking questions about its behavior. This week we also began to work on a new inquiry project. We have four groups in each class that will be setting up the following experiments:
* Does amount of water affect growth rate?
* Does type of liquid affect growth rate?
* Does type of light affect growth rate?
* Does amount of light affect growth rate?
* Does water temperature affect growth rate?
* Does type of soil affect growth rate?
These projects are designed to have the children learn about the scientific process through actually experiencing it, rather than reading about it in a book. They learned a great deal from the paper airplane projects and I can't wait to see what they learn by doing the previously mentioned experiments.
I hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend!
Math
As you should know, we have spent this week working with phrases and equations. I LOVE teaching algebra. It is so much fun to isolate variables and balance equations. We did a lot of work with finding the value of phrases and setting up equations to continue patterns. Unfortunately, we were not able to complete the football rankings this week, but they will back next week. Next week we are going to do more work with statistics and learn about mean, median, range, and mode. In addition to the previously mentioned skills, we have also spent some time working on basic facts. I am asking that all students continue to practice their addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts as much as possible. I am adding some new links to the blog. These links are to math sites that might be a fun way for your child to work on their facts. Be sure to check them out.
Science
Crickets were the focus this week. The students did really well creating Venn Diagrams to compare and contrast isopods and crickets. I loved watching how excited they were to observe the crickets through their hand lenses. It was great to see them identifying the parts of the cricket and asking questions about its behavior. This week we also began to work on a new inquiry project. We have four groups in each class that will be setting up the following experiments:
* Does amount of water affect growth rate?
* Does type of liquid affect growth rate?
* Does type of light affect growth rate?
* Does amount of light affect growth rate?
* Does water temperature affect growth rate?
* Does type of soil affect growth rate?
These projects are designed to have the children learn about the scientific process through actually experiencing it, rather than reading about it in a book. They learned a great deal from the paper airplane projects and I can't wait to see what they learn by doing the previously mentioned experiments.
I hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend!
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