Brrrrrrrr!!!!

Man, it has really gotten chilly outside. I am glad the kids let me play basketball with them at recess so I can keep warm. It has been a busy couple of weeks here in 4th grade. One of the highlights was our trip to the Country Music Hall of Fame on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The kids were so well behaved and it was a real treat to hear some of their songs performed. I am working on posting some video of the songs performed that were written by the 4C/4E students.

I wanted to let you know that I will be sending home assignment summaries once a week or once every two weeks. This should serve as a guide to your child's academic progress in Math and Science. It should also keep you up to date on what curriculum we are covering. Please remember to look over and discuss your child's grades with them. Here are some other highlights:

Math
We have begun digging further into the world of multiplication. This week we laid the groundwork for the more complex multiplication problems we will be doing next week. We will be working on multiplying by one-digit (no basic facts, i.e. 345 x 7), two-digit, and three-digit numbers. My plan is to teach the students three ways to solve these types of problems. We will learn lattice multiplication, regrouping (old school), and partial products. I hope to provide some video tutorials on these methods next week. These videos will be on the blog and can be used by you or your child to gain a better understanding of each method. So check back next week to see the videos. I also must talk about the fun activity we did today. We took a break from our normal curriculum to do an enrichment activity on permutations (arrangements). The students worked in small groups to determine the number arrangements they could make using 2 colors (2), 3 colors (6), and 4 colors (24). We then did 5 colors together. Using 5 colors you can make 120 different arrangements. The cool part was that the majority of the students, in both classes, realized the pattern. The even cooler part was that when we extended the pattern, 6 colors (720), 7 colors (5040), etc. a few of the students made the connection to factorials. Once I mentioned factorials there was a collective aha! moment in the class. I was proud to be your children's teacher today. Good stuff!!!!

Science
I was quite impressed with how well both classes did on the Aquatic Plant article test yesterday. I changed up the format a little bit and the test definitely required more than the usual regurgitation of facts. The students really had to think to be able to apply the information they had learned. The most exciting thing this week has to be the aquariums. They are up and running with fish, duckweed, snails, and elodea. The kids are really jazzed about this project and curious to see how the organisms interact in the ecosystem.

Thank you for all that you do and I hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend.