Week of 3.14 - 3.18

Holy cow, the Gallery Walk was unbelievable!  THANK YOU for joining us today, and to those who helped with food/ set up, thank you for your extra time.  I can't believe what a big deal it turned into; I'm so happy for the kids for this experience.  They truly planned it all on their own, and what a great learning experience it was!

Reading:  We finished our end-of-book assignment, the pop-up scenes .  The kids chose an important scene from the story to depict as a pop-up window; they summarized the scene and explained its importance.  I focused on two skills:  writing concise, focused summaries (instead of including unnecessary detail from the story), and creating a finished product that had a lot of detail (instead of leaving a lot of blank space on the page).  They are very cute and we were excited to show them at the Gallery Walk today!

4th grade math:  We wrapped up Unit 6 and tested today.  Next week we'll review the test, take the pretest for Unit 7, then dive right in.  Unit 7 covers "Fractions and their Uses and Chance and Probability."


Science:  Science was so much fun again this week!  We wrapped up lifeboats and recapped the key concepts of the unit so far:  1) A variable is anything you can change in an experiment that affects the results.  2) We only test one variable against the standard at a time.  We also began our final investigation in the unit:  planes!  The kids will learn about variables that affect the way a plane flies through exploration and formal investigation.  Ask your kids about their first 'free exploration' and the different ways they flew their planes.


Writing:  Thanks to those of you who helped make our Gallery Walk such a special event!  I know the kids are proud of their hard work; I'm glad we could celebrate it in a special way.


Miscellaneous:

• The Feinstein Challenge Food Drive continues!  Yesterday we counted the food and 583 items have been brought in so far.  This food drive will continue until next Wednesday, March 23rd.  All of this food will benefit people in our community.  It would be exciting to get over 800 items by next week.  Thanks for your donations!
• The next "Golden Lunchbox" competition is this Wednesday, March 23rd.  Please pack your child's lunch in re-usable container to make it a "waste-free" lunch.  We need to take back that award!