Room 19 News

Boring

2012-02-09T14:20:00.000-08:00

After yesterday’s adventures, today had to be a bit dull. And it was.

We began the day by clearing out and organizing portfolios. We corrected our math tests from Monday. The results are on the gradebook. We spent the time we would have normally spent on homework going over our math packets for the last four units, and those are also recorded on TeacherEase. We reviewed yesterday’s field trip and the the students made a chart of activities and new knowledge. They started to create a multi-paragraph composition about their trip.

After recess, the students went to Mr. Pratt for Social Studies. After lunch, I gave them 45 minutes to work on the field trip composition. They went to their usual mixing activities today. In math, we started on decimals today.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 16-20 five times each with a sentence for each one. All of this should be in cursive. (2) Do “Replacing Telling Statement” and “Inflectional Endings” on pages 203-204 of the Practice Book. (3) Do “Pronouns” on pages 213-214 of the Practice Book. (4) Do “Cloze Reading” and “Sequencing Events” worksheet. (5) Do “Decimal Place Value” pages 270-271 in the math book and “Decimal Patterns” on the back of the answer sheet. (6) Do “Adding, Subtracting Fractions 4” practice sheet.

Also, finish the composition about the field trip to the Leonis Adobe if that was not finished earlier.

Leonis Adobe

2012-02-08T14:42:00.001-08:00

Today we had our field trip to the Leonis Adobe in Calabasas. It’s a great field trip, and it fits in perfectly with where the students are in the fourth grade history curriculum.

The Leonis Adobe is a kind of living history museum where the students get to take part in all kinds of activities which help them to understand what life was like on a Southern California ranch in the 1880’s. The students were divided into various groups, and the groups took turns going around to different activities. The group I monitored went first to a tortilla making activity.The students mashed up corns and learned how to turn the masa into tortillas using a press.

They also learned how cream is turned into milk.

They then learned about roping cattle and had a chance to practice tossing a lasso.

They learned what life was like before washing machines and driers. Was that ever a revelation!

Pumping water from a well, however, seemed like something they’d like to still do.

And ringing the dinner bell to call ranch hands to meals was definitely fun.

They learned about brands and had an opportunity to make their own marks, first on a piece of paper and then on a piece of faux leather.

Seeing the animals, like this magnificent draught horse, was a huge highpoint.

And feeding alfalfa to the Merino sheep and the goats was by far everybody’s favorite activity.

Traffic was reasonably decent today, so we made it back in time to listen to a bit of James and the Giant Peach and to have a competition to solve the word search first.

Homework: Enjoy the rare day off!

Rainy Days and Tuesdays

2012-02-07T13:01:00.001-08:00

You have to learn to be flexible in fourth grade. Things just happen and you adjust to it. Our rain – such as it was, at least so far – was one of those things. Mr. Lawton getting laryngitis and cancelling class was another. You adjust and find something else to do.

We mostly reviewed for the math test, took the math test, and read and discussed our Treasures selection for the week. It’s an interesting informational article about ants. Our new reading series is quite heavy on nonfiction reading. That helps prepare the students more for middle school, I suppose. Fortunately, most of the selections are pretty good.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 6-10 five times each. Write one sentence for each word. (2) Do the spelling jumble. (3) Do “Matching Antonyms” and “Determining Feelings” worksheet. (4) Do the “Adding, Subtracting Fractions 2 worksheet”.

Also, students need to be sure that they are finished with the final draft of the animals/teamwork story. We started on this draft on Monday and they also had ample time to work on it today in class.

Congratulations!

2012-02-06T14:51:00.001-08:00

Room 19 did an amazing job on the coin drive. We raised over 1000 dollars! Yes!

We were not the first-place winners, but our performance was so stellar that we will be receiving the pizza and movie prize.

Thanks so much, room 19 families, for your generosity! Thanks, students, for your enthusiasm.

More Testing

2012-02-06T14:20:00.000-08:00

Sigh. Today was the mandated Quarter 2 math test. Why schedule it the week after the Literacy Test? I suspect nobody was in charge of thinking about that.

Still, I think they seemed to do pretty well on it. At least these new tests, once they have been scanned and entered into the district’s computers, do provide teachers with some helpful feedback about what specific skills need work. That’s more than the old ones used to do.

Other than that, we worked on editing our teamwork stories, and we read a little about ants to introduce our week’s story in the Treasures book.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 1-5 five times each in cursive. (2) Do “Vocabulary” and “Description" on pages 205-206 of the Practice Book. (3) Do “Character and Moral” and “Greek Roots” on pages 209-210 of the Practice Book. (4) Do “Write an Equation” pages 261-262 and “Test Prep” pages 264-265 in the math book. Also do “Crazy Quilt” on the back of the answer sheet. (5) Do “Adding and Subtracting Fractions 1” worksheet.

A “Gem” of a Day

2012-02-03T14:20:00.000-08:00

As usual, we started the day correcting our homework. We went to the library. We took our spelling test. The students bubbled their answers for the Literacy Periodic Assessment onto the Scantron forms and they took their fractions quiz. The results of that are on the gradebook; the spelling test will be there shortly.

After recess, we worked discussed birthstones. William brought in a set of these gems for all of us took look at. The students then planned advertisements for their own birthstones using all the techniques we have studies about persuasive writing. Here is an example from room 18; I did this project with them during the Science block last week.

Most of the students will be finishing this assignment over the weekend.

After lunch, we did math and we switched for our mixing activities. We ended the day with the Reflections awards assembly on the yard.

Homework: (1) Finish the gem advertisement. (2) Do “Subtracting Fractions,” pages 258-259 in the math book. (3) Do the second draft of the teamwork story. We started this story on Monday and worked on it in small groups yesterday.

Quiet Day

2012-02-02T14:20:00.000-08:00

If I were Garrison Keillor, I’d probably start it with something like “It was a pretty quiet day in room 19, our hometown….” It was a pretty uneventful day here, but those are some of the best for learning.

We worked finished our Literacy Periodic Assessments today (except for bubbling in the blue answer sheet). We learned more about hardness as a property for identifying minerals. We read more of James and the Giant Peach. We discussed adding and subtracting fractions with unequal denominators.

Before going on to the homework, I thought I’d show an example of one of their art projects with Mrs. Choi.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 16-20 five times each in cursive. Also write a sentence for each word. (2) Do the spelling word search. (3) Do “Understanding Special Meanings” worksheet. (4) Do “Evaluating What You Read” worksheet. (5) Do the “Birthstones” study sheet. Be sure to use the Science Resources book. (6) Do “Unlike Denominators,” pages 256-257 in the math book. (7) Do “Comparing Fractions 4” practice page.

Scratching

2012-02-01T13:47:00.001-08:00

In the last few weeks, the students have been learning about the missions and the Spanish colonial period with Mr. Pratt. One of the things they did in room 18 was to do pictures of some of the particular missions. Here are a couple particularly great ones

Today was a pretty ordinary Wednesday. We checked, corrected, and discussed out homework. We did a little more on the second Literacy Periodic Assessment. We went to Tech Center where Ms. Richard had them work on their “Vacation” podcast project.

In Science, the students reviewed the idea of using properties such as color, transparency, and texture to help identify minerals. They agreed that since so many minerals looked similar, other tests would be helpful. So we talked about hardness as a property and the students learned about the scratch test. They then took Monday’s mystery rocks and scratched them with fingernails, cooper pennies, and steel paperclips. This helped them to figure out which one was quartz, which was calcite, which was fluorite, and which was gypsum. They had a pretty good time doing it.

In the afternoon, we corrected the math test and listened to James and the Giant Peach. Our students went to Mrs. Choi for Art while Mrs. Cha’s class came here for music. In math, we’re discussing addition of fractions with like denominators – an easy concept for most of them.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 11-15 five times each in cursive. Also write a sentence for each word. (2) Do the spelling scramble. (3) Do “Determining Cause and Effect” worksheet. (4) Do “Making Inference” worksheet. (5) Do “Like Denominators,” pages 253-255 in the math book. (6) Do “Comparing Fractions 3” practice page.

Singing the Blues

2012-01-31T13:25:00.001-08:00

Today, in music class Mr. Lawton had the students doing a variety of blues-related activities. First, the students engaged in a game from the Georgia Sea Islands. They had a lot of fun with this!

Then he introduced a couple of classic blues songs to them like “Hound Dog” and the students both identified the elements of the genre and learned to feel the rhythm.

We also spent a lot of time discussing the math homework is preparation for today’s test. The student took the test this afternoon, but we will correct it tomorrow.

After the test, they had a lot of time to get started on the homework. So even though it may seem like a lot, most of them should have most of it done by the time they get home.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 6-10 five times each in cursive. Also write a sentence for each of these words. (2) Do “Making Inferences.” (3) Do “Determining Fact from Opinion.” (4) Do “Discovering Meaning Through Context.” (5) Do “Getting the Main Idea.” (6) Do the “Mining for Minerals” study sheet. Be sure to use the Science Resources text and to write in complete sentences. (7) Do “Comparing Fractions 2” worksheet.

Looking at Minerals

2012-01-30T14:20:00.000-08:00

The weekend went by pretty fast, didn’t it? But it’s nice to be back together again, too.

We started off discussing the math homework from last Friday. The students seem to have a pretty good grasp of fractions for the first chapter. They’ll be tested on it tomorrow. We also went over the Cricket in Times Square quiz and the spelling test from last week. The results – generally quite good – are on the gradebook.

This week we are going to be taking the Literacy Periodic Assessment. So, we will be doing a number of things to help focus on some of these key tested skills. One of those is the ability to distinguish among simile, metaphor, hyperbole, and personification. Our students first practiced writing and sharing examples of these today. They will be writing a story this week that will include examples of all of these. They started on the rough draft today. We’ll be refining it and doing second and final drafts later in the week.

In Science, we are starting work on minerals. Our students examined four mystery minerals today. They looked for properties such as color, opacity, and texture. They will be learning later in the week about the scratch test and the Mohs hardness scale to make a final determination of which minerals are which.

After lunch, we continued listening to James and the Giant Peach. We also evaluated a couple of paragraphs against a rubric for the trait of Word Choice. We are finishing topic 9 in math today.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 1-5 five times each in cursive. Write one sentence for each word, also in cursive. (2) Do “Remembering Details” study sheet. (3) Do “Classifying Words” worksheet. (4) Do “Finding Synonyms” worksheet. (4) Do “Problem Solving,” pages 243-244 and “Test Prep” on pages 247-248. (6) Do Comparing Fractions 1 worksheet.

Also, be sure that the rough draft of the story is finished for tomorrow.

Another Breathless Day

2012-01-26T15:38:00.000-08:00

This may seem like a lot, but they also had a lot of time to get started on it in class.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 16-20 five times each in cursive. Write one sentence, also in cursive, for each of these words. (2) Do "Advertisements," pages 197 and "Context Clues," page 198 in the Practice Book. (3) Do "Think and Compare," on page 429 and "Critical Thinking" on page 433 in the hardcover Treasures book. These should be answered in short - 2 or 3 sentences - paragraphs. (4) Do the two James and the Giant Peach sheets - "Compounds" and "Endings" (5) Do the even numbers on the Division worsheet. (6) Do pages 238-239 in the math book.

Too Busy!!!!

2012-01-25T15:35:00.000-08:00

It's been awfully hectic this week. Sorry for the negligence in posting.

More details on the great things they're doing later this week.

Homework: (1) Write the spelling words 11-15 five times each plus one sentence. (2) Do the spelling jumble. (3) Do the division worksheet. (4) Do "Improper Fractions," pages 236-237 in the math book.

Coins, coins!

2012-01-20T13:17:00.001-08:00

Quiet Day

2012-01-19T12:49:00.000-08:00

The day seemed to go by pretty calmly. Not that there's anything wrong with that at all! After doing our journals - we had some very amusing stories about discovering an alien in our midst including several who decided that the teacher was one - we checked and thoroughly discussed our homework. We finished reading the "Uncle Romie" story in Treasures.

We also started work on our latest writing trait, word choice. We went over the standard rubric for assessing this and translated it from "teacher talk" to words students could understand better. The students then started making posters to illustrate the various things which good along with good word choice:

In math, we corrected our Topic 8 tests and started on fractions. I'd be less than honest if I said I was terribly pleased with the results of the math test. There were many good scores, of course, but we had a large number of poor ones, too. The scores are on the gradebook. We'll be reviewing!!!

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 14-20 five times each in cursive. Also in cursive, write one sentence for each of these words. (2) Do the spelling word search. (3) Do "Using Sensory Details" and "Inflectional Endings" on pages 179-180 of the Practice Book. (4) Do the questions on page 391 in the Treasures book. Be sure to answer everything in complete sentences. (5) Do "Regions and Sets" pages 225-226 in the math book and do "Look-Alikes" on the back of the answer sheet. (6) Do "Factors 3" worksheet.

Brrr!

2012-01-18T09:51:00.001-08:00

What a chilly day! But we had plenty of work to keep us "warm"!

We worked on narrative in our journals today. The students had to write a story about something "horrifying." One of the girls wrote an incredibly funny story about discovering that Justin Bieber was at the door and planning to stay with them.

After that, we went off to Tech Center. Ms. Richard is starting a PowerPoint project with them. I am still a little mystified by what it is going to look like in the end, but the students were certainly working hard on it.

After recess, we worked on our mock rocks projects. The students had put out some of the solution to evaporate. Today they examined the remaining crystals using a hand lens and drew them carefully. They speculated about what those crystals might be. Salt? Sugar? Something else?

We started to read "Me and Uncle Romie," the next story in the Treasures reading series. We will finish it tomorrow. We did our usual afternoon art, drama, and physical education mixing. We took our test over Topic 8 in the math series. That will probably be graded tomorrow.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 6-13 five times each in cursive. Also in cursive, write one sentence for each of these words. (2) Do the spelling jumble. (3) Do "Adding Sensory Details" and "Compound Words" on pages 179-180 of the Practice Book. (4) Do "Irregular Verbs" on pages 189-190 of the Practice Book. (5) Read pages 182-185 in the Science Resources book and answer the questions on the study sheet. Be sure to use complete sentences. (6) Do "Factors 2" worksheet.

Back to School

2012-01-17T08:33:00.000-08:00

I hope everybody had a wonderful King Day weekend. It sure went by fast for the teacher!

Again, we had music with Mr.Lawton. He discussed rhythm with them today.

In Science, we continued our work from Friday. The students observed the vials of material from the mock rocks and how the material had settled out of suspension.

They then poured it into an evaporating dish to see if some of the material is in solution - it is - and to discover what those materials are.

In more routine matters, we also discussed this week's vocabulary and took the spelling test that we didn't have time for on Friday.

Please review for the math test tomorrow!

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 1-6 five times each. Also write one sentence in cursive for each word. (2) Do "Vocabulary," page 181 and "Comprehension," page 182 in the Practice Book. (3) Do "Vocabulary Strategy," page 186 and "Text Feature," page 187, also in the Practice Book. (4) Do "Problem Solving," pages 214-215 and "Test Prep" pages 215-216 in the math book. (5) Do "Factors" 1 worksheet.

Mock Rocks

2012-01-13T08:47:00.001-08:00

We began today with Ms Drake reading to the students about Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

Busy

2012-01-12T14:30:00.000-08:00

It was and is a busy day. Just the homework for now.

Homework: (1) Do spelling words 16-20 five times each in cursive. (2) Do pages 169, 172, 175, and 176 in the Practice Book. (3) Do "Perspective," pages 212-213 in the math book. (4) Do the "Four times Two 4" practice sheet. (5) Do the spelling word search for additional practice. This is semi-optional.

Cool

2012-01-11T14:42:00.000-08:00

It's feeling a little bit more like winter again. I suppose we should have some rain - we really need it - but as a teacher I cannot say I've missed rainy day schedule!

We also had a pretty cool day in room 19 today. We worked on our persuasive writing again, and the students wrote about places that people should visit. I must say, we have some promising travel agents in room 19! Their choices were good and their reasoning quite persuasive.

Ms. Richard is starting a new project with them in Tech Center. I am not quite sure what the final produce will look like, but they had fun working in Photo Booth and in PowerPoint.

Again, they went to Mr. Pratt for History where - among other things - they are working on mission watercolors. Sounds like a good time to me!

Homework: (1) Practice cursive by writing spelling words 11-15 five times each. (2) Answer the "Critical Thinking" questions on page 363 in the Treasures book. Be sure to answer in complete sentences using most of the words from the question. (3) Do "Linking Verbs" pages 177-178 in the Practice Book. (4) Do "Nets" pages 210-211 in the math book. (5) Do the "Four Times Two 3" math worksheet.

Music Begins

2012-01-10T09:51:00.000-08:00

Today the students started music with Mr. Lawton.

As you can see, they had fun.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 6-10 in cursive five times each. (2) Do "Solids," pages 207-209. (3) Do the "Four Times Two 2" practice sheet.

Welcome Back

2012-01-09T14:20:00.000-08:00

It was a lot of fun to be on vacation, but it was also fun to come back today. We had a great first school day of 2012 in room 19.

We started a new story in the reader, so we went over the vocabulary today. The students are working on persuasive writing this week, so today they practiced writing a short paragraph about "the best show on TV." Their choices were interesting. So different from what the teacher watches....

They went to History with Mr. Pratt. His students are working on geology with me, and that is the unit I will be starting with our class next week. We took the algebra quiz that we didn't have time for on the 16th today, and I'll be putting the results in the gradebook today.

In math, we're working on radius and diameter. It's super easy!

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 1 to 5 in cursive five times each. (2) Do pages 167-168 in the Practice Book on plurals and this week's vocabulary. (3) Do the spelling jumble. (4) Do "Circles," pages 204-205 in the math book. "Circle in the Air" on the back is a logic problem. It may be best to save that for last. (5) Do "Four Times Two 1" and be sure to show all work.

Family Night

2011-12-08T11:05:00.001-08:00

Tonight is Family Night. I have other commitments, but I hope many of you can make it to hear the students in the orchestra, the Orff ensemble, and the recorder group. This is also a great time to check out our book fair.

Homework: (1) Do the spelling word search to prepare for the test. (2) Do "Draw Conclusions" on page145 of the Practice Book. (3) Do "Line Graphs" on page 148 of the Practice Book. (4) Do "Long Division 4" worksheet - all problems. (5) Do "Multiple-Step Problems" pages 182-185 and "Test Prep" pages 186-187 in the math book. Also do "Graph Sales" on the back of the answer sheet.

Chilly

2011-12-07T10:26:00.001-08:00

Brrr! But a good day. Here's the homework.

Homework: (1) Write a sentence for each of the spelling words. (2) Do "Prefixes," page 149 and "Silent Letters," page 150 in the Practice Book. (3) Do "Verb Tenses," page 153 and "End Punctuation," page 154 also in the Practice Book. (4) Do Long Division 3. Students can do all the problems today. (5) Do "Prime and Composite Numbers," pages 180-181 in the math book. Also do "Pyramid Patterns" on the back. This activity introduces students to squaring numbers.

Tuesday in Conference Week

2011-12-06T11:34:00.001-08:00

Good to see everybody at conferences. Again, just the homework this week.

Homework: (1) Do "Factors," pages 176-177 in the enVision math text. Also do "Division Amazement" on the back of the answer sheet. (2) Do the odd numbers only on the "Long Division 2" worksheet. (3) Do the spelling jumble. (4) Do "Proofreading" page 151 and "Verb Tenses" page 152 in the Practice Book.

Also, finish the summary of Dear Mrs. LaRue.

Conference Week

2011-12-05T14:31:00.001-08:00

This week I'll just be posting homework. I look forward to seeing everybody.

Homework: (1) Write the spelling words in syllables. (2) Do "Silent Letters" and "Vocabulary" on pages 143 and 144 of the Practice Book. (3) Also do "Phonics" and "Vocabulary" on pages 155 and 156 of the same book. (4) On the "Long Division 1" worksheet do the odd problems only. (5) Do the even numbers for "Zeroes in the Quotient," pages 176-177 in the math book. Also do "Stop the Flood" on the back of the answer sheet.

Jumping'

2011-12-02T13:40:00.001-08:00

Homeward Bound

2011-12-01T14:09:00.001-08:00

Heading home early today because I'm just exhausted. The students had the last 45 minutes of class as study hall so I think a good bit of the homework should done.

Homework: (1) Do "Dividing," enVision Math pages 172-173. Show work on a separate paper. (2) Do the questions on page 285 of the Treasures reading anthology. (3) Do pages 141 and 142 in the Practice Book. (4) Do the even numbers only on the "Three Times Two 4" worksheet. (5) Do the spelling wordsearch.

Fire Drill

2011-11-30T12:24:00.001-08:00

It was a pleasant day and it went by quite quickly. We started with writing. The students are practicing writing personal vignettes. Today they wrote about a special meal. We also worked on irregular past tense verbs. Before we left for Tech Center, the students changed seats. For most of them that was probably the best part of the day!

At Tech Center, Ms. Richards helped them prepare for a touch typing assessment. The students then went to Mr. Pratt for Social Studies, while I played vocabulary baseball with his class in Science. As we had been informed that there would be a fire drill at 1:30, I started math with the class right after recess. We're continuing to master the standard algorithm (that is, procedure) for long division.

The students went to their different mixing activities after that. They did a pretty fine job with the fire drill - the second highlight of their day, no doubt - and I gave them about 45 minutes of "study hall" after the fire drill to get some or most of that math work done.

Homework: (1) Write good sentences for each of the twenty spelling words. (2) Do "Inferences," Practice Book pages 133-134. (3) Do "Proofreading" and "Grammar," Practice Book pages 139-140. (4) Do odd numbers only on the "Three Times Two 3" math worksheet. The back side will be Thursday's homework. (5) Do "Dividing 2-Digit," Envision Math pages 169-170. Show all work on a separate paper. Also do "Will They Reach the Top?" on the back of the answer sheet.

Quick Post

2011-11-29T12:39:00.001-08:00

Just the homework for today.

Homework: (1) Do the spelling jumble. (2) Do "Fluency," Practice Book page 135 and "Toolbars" on page 136 of the same book. (3) Do "Models and Symbols," pages 165-166 in the math book and "New Shape" on the back of the answer sheet. (4) Do the "Three Times Two 2" math worksheet.

Back in the Saddle

2011-11-28T15:05:00.001-08:00

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. Four days went by pretty quickly, didn't it?

We're back in the usual routine now. We practiced writing personal vignettes - the students had to think of something memorable which happened to them over break - and reviewed present tense verbs. We corrected Wednesday's math work. We started a new theme in Treasures on "Powerful Words" and the students brainstormed words which seemed to have a strong emotional feel to them. We looked at this week's vocabulary, and read the mini-story in the reader which introduced it.

The students went to Mr. Pratt for History where they are starting to look at the rancho period in California history. After lunch, they returned to me where we read another chapter of Island of the Blue Dolphins and worked a little on making inferences. We went to our different areas for mixing, and then finished up with math. We're making great progress towards long division. Today's lesson introduced the idea of remainders which everybody seemed to get right away.

Homework: (1) Do "Dividing with Remainders," pp 162-163 in the math book and "Order Lunch" on the back. (2) Write the spelling words in syllables. (3) Do pages 132-133 and pages 137-138 in the Treasures Practice Book. These are pretty easy. (4) Do the "Three Times Two 1" worksheet. Tomorrow's math homework is the back side, "Three Times Two 2". These were accidentally photocopied together. It will be turned in on Wednesday.

A Mosaic of Thanks

2011-11-24T14:57:00.000-08:00

Today we had a big art project. I explained mosaic to the students and told them that real mosaic is dome with rocks, and hammers, and diamond saws and concrete. I told them that if I had my way I'd let them experiment with those materials, but the darned school district lawyers think those things are little too dangerous. So instead we used paper and glue to achieve some of the same effect. This was a lovely way to spend the day before Thanksgiving. The children were able to work in partners, and I was able to grade their Language Proficiency essays and even get started on the report cards. Sometimes you actually can multitask in an elementary classroom.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Tuesday in Turkey Week

2011-11-22T14:35:00.001-08:00

A Hopping Good Day

2011-11-17T14:14:00.001-08:00

The day went passed pretty quickly. We did a little journal work at the beginning of the day where the students had to explain the meaning of Thanksgiving to a long-lost cousin from Swushwashitan. You can imagine how much fun they had with that! We read a story in the reader about the Pony Express. This is a companion non-fiction selection to the Mystic Horse legend they read earlier in the week. We also did more work on the Literacy Periodic Assessment. We should finish that off tomorrow.

In History, the students watched a little of the film version of Island of the Blue Dolphins. They will be taking their test on Native Californians tomorrow, so it was a nice way to tie up both social studies and literature units. After lunch, we had the Science Periodic Assessment. I sometimes wonder if the district's ability to create web-accessible databases isn't leading them to create new tests to fill them up! But this test was generally a pretty fair assessment of ecosystems and food webs.

At PE, I worked with the students on a broad jump relay.

Math continued our look at the standard algorithm for double digit multiplication.

Homework: (1) Do “Greater Numbers,” pages 148-149 in the math book. Also do “Playing with Numbers” on the back ofthe answer sheet. (2) Do “Suffixes” page127, “Possessives” page 128, “Plurals” page 129, and “Strong Verbs” page130 in the TreasuresPractice Book. (3) Do the multiplication worksheet. Be sure to show all work! (4) Do the spelling wordsearch.

Short and Swift

2011-11-15T11:58:00.001-08:00

It was a short day. We worked on the final drafts of our Stunt Ranch field trip composition in the morning. We discussed our math homework. We read a good story from the reader called "Mystic Horse" and we worked on understanding its structure: exposition, rising action, climax, and denouement. We did some more work on the Literacy Periodic Assessment.

The students worked in History with Mr. Pratt. After lunch, we turned our attention to a multiplying by tens. Logically, I would have put this lesson in front of the one we did yesterday....

Homework: (1) Do "Multiples of 10" on pages 144-145 in the math book. Also do "A Finished Product!" on the back of the math answer sheet. (2) Write a half-page summary of the "Mystic Horse" story. Answer the questions on page 251 in the hardcover book. Be sure to use complete sentences. Some questions will require a short paragraph. Also do page 121 in the Practice Book. (3) Do the multiplication worksheet. Be sure to show all work! (4) Do the spelling jumble.

Please be aware than next Tuesday is NOT a shortened day. Nor is Wednesday a minimum day. All days next week are regular days with 2:30 dismissal.

More Testing! (Sigh)

2011-11-14T12:04:00.001-08:00

For the last few years, after each unit in Open Court Reading there was a unit test. They were not that good, but teachers were used to giving them and the students knew how to take them. This year, with the Treasures reading program, the district has now instituted something called the "Literacy Periodic Assessment." This is, I think, in most ways an improvement on the old OCR tests. These look a lot more like the CST and while the reading comprehension questions are harder, the vocabulary and word study questions are fairer. , Also, there's only three of these tests, not five like there used to be. We started on the first of these tests this week, and we'll be doing a little bit of it every day.

We also started on double digit multiplication this week. This is a tough skill to master at first, and the way that it is explained in the math book is conceptually helpful, but not that real life helpful. Parents can feel free to explain the short way to do this to the students at any time. We'll be introducing that on Wednesday.

Homework: (1) Do "Arrays and an Expanded Algorithm," pages 141-143 in the math book even numbers only. Also do"Crazy Cube" on the back. (2) Do pages 119 and 120 in the Treasure Practice Book. (3) Write this week's spelling words in syllables. You may use a dictionary to help you. (4) Do the multiplication worksheet.

Beyond the Hump

2011-11-09T14:26:00.000-08:00

Wednesday is often called "hump day" because it comes in the middle of the week and once you're dome with it you are over the hump and headed towards the weekend. But with no school on Friday we are definitely beyond the hump!

We continued work on our longer narratives today. Today they had to write about surviving a plane crash! They did a pretty good job establishing setting, characters, and creating conflict and resolution. We went to the Tech Center where most of the students have finished the Lincoln project and most were on to their onomatopoeia project. This had them leaning to create tables in Word and to import graphics.

We read a rather well-written selection on a wild horse sanctuary in South Dakota in the Treasures book. We continued work on our longer essay about our field trip to the Stunt Ranch. We corrected the math tests, and the results are on the gradebook. We did our mixing activities, and in math we're on to starting multiplication by two digits.

Homework: (1) Do "Using Mental Math," pages 136-137 in the math book. Also do "World's Greatest" on the back of the answer sheet. (2) Do the "Think and Compare" questions on pages 219 of the Treasures book. Use complete sentences, but you do not have to copy the questions. (3) Do the "Factors 3" worksheet. (4) Do the spelling word search.

Quick Day

2011-11-08T12:14:00.000-08:00

Tuesdays always go by quickly, but today seemed especially fast!

We started out with our journal writing activity. We are working on longer narratives right now. Today I gave them a simple situation. You're in your house and your mom collapses unconscious on the floor. You try to call 911, but the phone won't work. So you have to drive her to hospital yourself! You can imagine the fun the students had with this one.

We also started work on a longer composition about the Stunt Ranch field trip and took our math chapter tests.

Homework: (1) Do "R-controlled vowels" on page 115 and "Plural Possessive Nouns" on page 116 of the Treasures workbook. (2) Write sentences for each of the 20 spelling words. (3) Do the "Factors" worksheet.

Monday Musings

2011-11-07T14:36:00.000-08:00

We started our day with a traffic safety assembly. I would like to say that it was interesting for me or the students, but that would not quite be true. I do suppose that there were some useful reminders about traveling safely, and that it was helpful to review these with the children. Still, there were a few light moments such as this man dressed as a traffic light.

The rest of our day was largely spent with the LAUSD quarterly math test. I am not quite sure why the district insists on spending all that money on a math series which includes many assessment resources and then also develop their own math tests on top of those. But these are mandatory, so I had the students work on it.

We did do our afternoon rotations, too, so at least they had a little fun with art, drama, and physical education.

Homework: (1) Do "Use Logical Reasoning" on pages 127-128 of the math book and "Test Prep" on pages 130-131. Also do "Subtracting Greater Numbers" on the back of the answer sheet. (2) Look up the following words in the glossary and write down their definitions: descendants, emerge, habitat, fragile, threatened, and sanctuary. (3) Do the spelling jumble. (4) Do "Phonics" on page 107 of the Treasures workbook and "Vocabulary" on page 108 of the same book. (5) Do the factors worksheet. Be sure to list the factors in order from least to greatest.

Let me remind all the families that Friday is Veteran's Day holiday and that there is no school.

Drizzly

2011-11-04T15:01:00.000-07:00

Stunt Ranch Field Trip

2011-11-03T16:59:00.000-07:00

Today we had our field trip to the UCLA Stunt Ranch in Calabasas. The name is somewhat misleading. It has nothing to do with movies or movie stunts - a disappointment to some of the students. Rather, it is a nature reserve and an interpretive center for Tongva and Chumash culture. It is called the "Stunt" ranch because it was first owned by a family of that name who donated it later to UCLA. It is a perfect fourth grade field trip with one exception. It's in Calabasas, so it is a very long bus ride even if there is minimal traffic.

We boarded the bus about 8:45 and took off a few minutes later - after a few nervous moments when the bus wouldn't start! The traffic was not particularly bad, but it still took us about an hour to make it there. The students were generally pretty good on the bus. Some of the parent volunteers came with us on the school bus, while others had a much more enjoyable time driving themselves.

Our guides met us at side of road and gave us a short introduction. Nancy was the guide for the group I accompanied. She was great! She was a former LAUSD teacher who happened to have been Sean Penn's first grade teacher. I guess if she could handle a future movie stare, 15 children were no problem.

As we descended from the road down into the canyon, we saw beautiful views of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Along the way, Nancy explained many things such as this gall. It is an acorn which a particular kind of wasp uses as a place to lay its eggs. That is why the acorn swells to such a size. We cut one of them open later and saw the larva of a wasp inside.

Nancy also explained about poison oak and the students all recited, "Leaves of three, let it be!"

After we walked for about a mile, we arrived at the interpretive center. The different groups from the two classes rotate through different native American activities. Nancy's group started with Chumash games.

We then went on to do a version of cave paintings. Since it is impractical to have the students descend into caves, they used sandpaper, glue, and sand to make Indian symbols.

The the technique was simple, the results were impressive.

Students also tried their hand at grinding acorns, and Nancy showed them how the native peoples cooked by placing heated rocks in the acorn mush.

We had a well-deserved lunch after this. The students grumbled about having to take their trash back with them, but they clean up their area nicely. Our walk back was about another mile, but we took this more quickly and made fewer interpretive stops,

It was along bus ride to school, and we did not arrive until after 2:30. It seemed pointless to give them homework at that point, and I was ready to go home too!

Homework: Enjoy a free night!

Picture Day

2011-11-02T15:02:00.000-07:00

Today was picture day. It's an awful lot of time spent lining students up by height, and waiting while other kids and classes get their pictures taken. It's really boring for students and teachers alike. Both get restless and irritable.

Taking the class picture is a little more interesting. At least you get to be outside. I snapped this one while the photographer was getting ready. I'm sure you'll agree that the professionals take much better pictures than I do! Of course, they have better equipment than an iPhone, too.

We did a few other things, of course. We worked on writing narratives with problem and solution. We went to Tech Center where we worked on keyboarding as well as learning the ins and outs of Microsoft Word. We began studying the order of operations in math.

Homework: (1) Do "Expressions with Parentheses" pages 122-123 in the math book. (2) Do pages 95-96 and 99-100 in the reading workbook. (3) Do sentences for each of the 20 spelling words. (4) Do "Larger Numbers 3" worksheet.

Corks

2011-10-31T14:38:00.000-07:00

We've mentioned "Mixing" on this blog many times this year. This is when the students of all four fourth grade classes are combined and divided so that they can get to know each other and so the teachers can get to work with all the students on the grade level. Mrs Meldrum, the long-term substitute while Mrs Choi is on maternity leave, has been doing art with the students. Lately she's been helping them understand the difference between positive and negative space in art. Here are a couple examples of an activity:

Halloween is not a great day to introduce a lot of new concepts. The students are little too spacey for that. This is one of those days when teaching elementary school is like trying to keep 30 corks under water at the same time. It can be done - sort of - but it's exhausting!

Our only really new idea for the day was in math where we introduced the ideas of variables and expressions. The students seemed to catch on pretty quickly to this.

Today I worked hard to give the students as much "study hall" time as possible so that they could avoid having homework tonight. I gave them the entire period from 1:00 to 2:30 to get started on some pretty reasonable assignments.

Homework: (1) Do pages 118-119 in the math book. (2) Do Larger numbers 1. (3) Do the spelling jumble.

Getting Revved Up!

2011-10-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

School today began with a special kickoff assembly for Culture Day. As most of you know, Culture Day is not only our special celebration of the many national backgrounds of the students at Third Street School, but it is also a major fundraiser for our parent booster club, The Friends of Third. At this morning's assembly, Frances Okwu, shown below, told the students about all the special celebrity guests that will be coming on November 5.

The students were generally pretty attentive.

Councilman Tom LaBonge was the special guest, and even thought the students hadn't the faintest idea who he was they follow Roy Forbes' direction that they give him a hearty welcome by screaming and waving as if he were somehow a fourth Jonas brother.

We cut out a couple minutes early from the assembly to get to library. In addition to Mrs. Sartore, we also now have Ms. Mia Drake as our library aide. She is a wonderful addition to our staff.

The students had less time than usual, but they did a great job looking for and picking out books.

The rest of the day was not quite as exciting as the first hour. Sort of boring, actually. We had a lot of assessment today. As we usually do on Friday, we had spelling and reading tests. We happened to come to the end of a math topic today, so we had our "first chance" test over Topic 4 and our "second chance" test over Topic 3. Overall, the students did well on both of the tests and the results are on the gradebook. Please check that if you have not done so recently. We also did the final draft of one of the compare and contrast essays - the students had their choice of which one - that they had worked on in journal time each day this week.

Homework: As a special reward for being so fantastic yesterday for our visitors, enjoy a homework-free weekend!

On Display

2011-10-27T15:19:00.000-07:00

Periodically at Third Street School, we have visitors from other schools in the district and even from other countries. Today, visitors from South Korea accompanied by our principal, Dr. Suzie K. Oh, came to room 19 to watch us work on our thinking and writing skills. Our students were amazing!

As I mentioned at our Back to School night, our class is using the 6+1 Traits of Writing program. Part of this approach to teaching writing - it isn't really a program in the way that Open Court was - has students reading anonymous papers and scoring them against a rubric. This helps sharpen the students' skills at analyzing good and bad writing. This was what our students demonstrated so capably today for our South Korean visitors. They looked at two essays, one on "Dinosaurs" and the other on "Rainy Days" and responded to them. Each was graded for Ideas and Organization on a scale of 1-5.

The students were so articulate as they connected the rubric with details in the composition. Our visitors were amazed and Dr. Oh was just bursting with pride.

After the visitors left, we finished our food webs. They were all good, but this one was particular nice.

Many of our students go to Beginning Strings after recess, so we did our math at this time instead of Science because I didn't want students to miss brine shrimp hatching. Our math lesson was pretty much review for tomorrow's test. After lunch we read a chapter of Island of the Blue Dolphins and worked on our body percussion piece in music. We did the usual rotations at Mixing.

Our somewhat belated Science experiment for the week is hatching brine shrimp. This is a great activity for several reasons. First, it connects to social studies because of the brine shrimp population at Mono Lake which is so important for our California gulls. Second, the experiment helps the student understand both range of tolerances and isolating one variable in an experiment.

The experiment works like this. The students fill four cups with 150 mL of treated water. In one cup, they add no salt. In another, they add one measure of salt. In another they add two measures of salt, and in the final cup they add three measures of salt.

Finally, they add a small mini-spoon of brine shrimp eggs to each cup.

We'll watch over the next couple days to see how many hatch in each salt solution.

Homework: (1) Study for the spelling test. (2) Do "Reasonableness," pages 108-110 and "Test Prep" pages 112-113.

Warming Up

2011-10-26T14:18:00.000-07:00

The wintry damp we had at the beginning of the week has now given way, according to the weather service, to a red flag warning! One extreme to another.

But there were no red flags today in room 19. We began with working on compare and contrast essays. Today the students worked on comparing spaghetti and pizza. It's not an inspiring topic, but it helps them master the form. We particularly talked about creating a good introduction to interests the reader, something more than "I am going to compare pizza and spaghetti."

In Tech Center we continued our work on the Lincoln paper. The students learned how to save images from Google Images, how to place them behind text, and how to make an image transparent. In Science, we worked on our food webs some more.

We read another chapter of Island of the Blue Dolphins. In this chapter, Rontu is attacked by the other wild dogs. The students were riveted by details like "muzzles dripping with blood." At PE, I continued work with students on the running broad jump. In math, we're working on multiplying four and five digit numbers.

Homework: (1) Do "Greater Numbers," pages 106-107 even numbers only. (2) Do sentences for each of the 20 spelling and vocabulary words. (3) Do the math worksheet. (4) Do "Key to Multiplication" on the back of the answer sheet.

Cold!

2011-10-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

It was a remarkably cold day today, and the sun came out only at the very end. Those aren't bad days for fourth graders to concentrate, however, and we had a most pleasant and productive day.

We started out with writing compare and contrast paragraphs. The students are starting now to have to use more than one paragraph in their responses to the the prompt and to think about the structure of their writing in terms of paragraphing. That's a big jump from what they had to do in third grade.Today the student and teacher switched roles. Usually I provide them with pictures and a sentence so that they can infer the meaning of our vocabulary words; today I gave them the definition and they provided the sentences and the picture. Most will be finishing that tonight.

We also worked on food webs, using what is called Kodaly speech syllables to read rhythm, and many worked with me on the running broad jump.

Homework: (1) Do "Multiplying 2 Digit Numbers," pages 101-102 in the math book. (2) Divide the spelling words into syllables. Use dictionary as needed. Place on a separate paper. (3) Do the math skills worksheet.

Optional today: Mathematical Marlena" on the back of the answer sheet. It's really a cool number pattern, but some students and parents each year find it extremely confusing.

Also, be sure to finish the vocabulary word pictures.

A Sudden Knock

2011-10-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

We begin each day, as I have often mentioned, with journal writing. The students get a prompt each day, and these are related to the writing trait that we are stressing. Right now we are focusing on writing structures, and we're beginning with narratives. So yesterday to give them a chance to write any kind of story they wanted I gave them an opening sentence and left them to develop a story with a problem and a solution. The opening line was "There was a sudden knock on the door." There were lots of good responses, but this one delighted the whole class.

There was a sudden know at the door. Mr. Manon was scared. He slowly opened the door. Nobody was there. A short while later, there was a knock at the back door. He got his club ready. He was ready to knock someone out when he saw them. Nobody was there. About a second later, there was a knock at the front door again. He thought it was just some teenagers doing ding-dong-ditch. So he got ready to yell at some boys. But when he opened the door, five walking dead were there! He screamed! He had to do something. H e took his club and hit each of the five walking dead in the head. They each did get hurt but not injured. They stepped inside. They cornered Mr. Manon. Mr. Manon tried to fight back with his club, but the dead were too much for him. The walking dead had a nice meal. Mr. Manon joined the walking dead with no choice because, after all, he was obviously dead.

You can probably guess that it was a boy who wrote that one! We had no zombies knocking on our door today in room 19, but we had a pleasant and productive day.

We read a story in the Treasures about Rosa Parks. This is a typical pattern in this reading series: partner two selections with very similar themes so that the students can be more aware of the genre and literary structure. The students finished the time before recess by working on their trait of organization poster.

After recess, I worked with the students from room 18 on their food chain mobiles. I don't think I posted pictures of the marvelous ones that our students did last week. Here are a few.

After lunch, we read another chapter of Island of the Blue Dolphins. I gave the students some questions over the reading selections to help them review vocabulary and important concepts. Most were pretty well finished before mixing began.

At mixing, I've mentioned that my emphasis this week has been teaching broad jump. Students did quite well with this skill. To get a "4", they had to jump at least a yard and most of them did that easily.

Homework: (1) Do "Using Rounding to Estimate" on pages 94-95 in the math book and do Who's Here? on the back of the answers sheet. (2) Do the Investigation 3 crossword puzzle. (3) Do Two Digit Multiplication (4) Do the spelling word search.

Also, finish the "Brother Martin" reading questions and study for the Social Studies test tomorrow.

Wondrous Wednesday

2011-10-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

We had a really great day. Wednesdays give us an appealing day of Tech Center, Social Studies with Mr. Pratt, and mixing in the afternoon.

In our 6+1 Traits writing program we are turning our attention from the trait of ideas to that of organization. The students rewrote the rubric or scoring guide into kid-friendly language, and they're now using that to create posters. Here are a couple early examples:

In Tech Center, the student continued our work on the Abraham Lincoln exercise. The students not only learned to use the online version of World Book with this, but they wrote the paper in MS Word and learned to insert an image as a background.

Homework: (1) Do “Using Mental Math,” pages 92-93 in the math book and“Block Party” on the back of the answer sheet. (2) Write sentences for EACH of the 20 spelling and vocabularywords. (3) Make a chart for transition/sequence words in BrotherMartin. Copy the words and page numbers. (4) Do Two DigitMultiplication 3 worksheet.

Hectic

2011-10-18T14:51:00.000-07:00

A hectic but pleasant and productive day. Here's the homework. If I have a chance I'll describe our activities in more detail later.

Homework: (1) Sort the words into a chart. The categories are long vowel made by a single letter, short vowel, -le ending, r-controlled vowel, vowel partners, and silent e. Some words will go into more than one category. (2) Do pages 71-72 and 73-74 in the Treasures Practice book. (3) Do pages 90-91 in the math book. (4) Do the multiplication practice worksheet.

Cool Day

2011-10-14T09:14:00.001-07:00

Energy from the Sun

2011-10-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

Today we learned about energy from the sun in two ways. First of all, it continued to be brutally hot and we once again had to cancel some outdoor activities. But more importantly, we learned how energy from the sun is the source of all food energy in ecosystems.

In Science today, the students learned about producers and consumers. They learned that producers, like plants or algae, make their own food from sunlight. They learned that other organisms, such as animals, cannot manufacture their own food but must eat other plants or other animals in order to survive. We distinguished between first and second level consumers.

To make this a bit more fun, the students were given cards with different woodland ecosystem plants and animals on them. They had to classify the different organisms and place them in a chart.

Homework: (1) Do the "Food Chains and Food Webs" study questions. (2) Do "Using Multiplication Facts," pages 78-79 in the math book. Also do the "Table that Rule" on the back. (3) Do the multiplication and division study sheets. (4) Do the spelling wordsearch.

Hot!

2011-10-12T14:34:00.000-07:00

What happened to our cool fall weather? Just a week ago or so we were on rainy day schedule. Today we cancelled PE because it was just too hot to be out on the yard!

It was, nevertheless, a productive day. We did all the usual morning stuff with our journals and we corrected homework. We then went to the Tech Center where we continued work in the Digital Library and with Microsoft Word. After recess we added some more critters to our aquariums and we talked about food chains. In math, we're starting to finish up our look at multiplication and division.

Homework: (1) Do the Winn-Dixie story questions on page 119 of the Treasures book. This is a major assignment, but I already gave the students ample time to work on it in class. (2) Do "Special Quotients" on pages 76-77 of the math book. (3) Write sentences for each of the spelling words. (4) Do the multiplication and division facts sheet. This will be Friday's quiz and it will be timed!

Extra Credit: Do the "Analogies" page on the back of the math answer sheet.

Enriching the Environment

2011-10-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

First of all, a big thank you to all the people who came to this morning's "Back-to-School Breakfast." I enjoyed talking with parents informally about their children's progress and any concerns. It was nice hearing how many children seem to be having a great experience in fourth grade. Of course, I cannot claim complete credit for that. We have a great team of fourth grade teachers. If you could not come, please stop by as soon as you can so that you can sign up for the December parent conferences.

It was a pretty short day. We did our journals - today's topic was "How to Brush Your Teeth" which elicited some great responses - and we checked our homework. We read the selection from the novel Because of Winn-Dixie in the reading anthology. In Science, we added plants to our aquariums. We added lemna and elodea. We'll see how this begins to affect the environment for the goldfish.

Homework: (1) Do "Relating Multiplication and Division," pages 74-75 in the envision Math book. Also do "Just the Fact(or)s on the back. (2) Do the spelling jumble. (3) Do the multiplication and division practice sheets.

Tennis Balls and Fish

2011-10-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

It was a much quieter day - literally. The noise from all the chairs dragging on the floors was getting really annoying to me and to the students, so I came in on Saturday after the gym and cut tennis balls to put on the bottoms of the chairs. It looks a bit dorky, but it certainly makes the room quieter.

We started out today with our journals as usual. We are working on accuracy of details as a key part of having good writing ideas, so the students wrote about how to make and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and we discussed which students had the most complete and accurate details. We also continued trying to identify compound predicates in sentences. We went over the vocabulary words for the next story, "Because of Winn Dixie."

In Science, we are turning our attention from terrariums to aquariums. The students began Science today by observing gold fish in groups.

We also read about freshwater environments.

After lunch, we read a bit more in Island of the Blue Dolphins. We worked in Music at transferring our word chant from body percussion into instrumental percussion using hand drums and rhythm and lumi sticks. At PE, I am teaching broad jump skills this week. In math, we are reviewing division facts.

Homework: (1) Sort the spelling words by long o pattern. Create a table or chart. Not all the words will be in the chart as some are vocabulary words. (2) Do pages 58-60 in the green Practice workbook. (3) Do the "Freshwater Environments" questions in Science. (4) Do "Meanings of Division," pages 71-73 in the math book. Also do "Babysitting" on the back of the answer sheet. (5) Do the practice page of multiplication and division facts. The students will have a time test on Friday.

Please try to attend tomorrow's Back-to-School Breakfast event. It will be your time to sign up for parent conferences in December and to talk informally about your child's progress.

Rain, Rain

2011-10-05T14:17:00.000-07:00

Children love rainy days. Teachers hate them. They had a pretty good time today. I just survived.

We started out with our journal and language activities as usual. In language, we're continuing our look at compound subjects. In writing, we're looking at the details we use to make sure that we are really "showing" and not "telling."

In Tech Center today the students used the digital library for research. To give them a structured introduction to this amazing resource, I wrote up a paragraph on the life of Abraham Lincoln with lots of mistakes in it. I suggested they use the World Book site on the digital library to research a bit on Lincoln and find and correct my errors. They had a pretty good doing this. Those who finished - and that was most of them - began retyping the story on Microsoft Word to improve word processing and keyboarding skills.

We switched as usual after recess and the students went to Mr. Pratt for history. During lunch time, we watched about half of the Disney movie The Amazing Journey. It's not only one of my favorites - it's about dogs, after all - but it is old enough that most of the students have not seen it before.

After lunch, we did a bit of blind contour drawing in art. This is a classic art school exercise where students do not look at their papers but only at the object. They try to never lift their pencil or marker as they do this.

I did modify the exercise slightly by allowing the students a few minutes at the end to make a few erasures and clean it up a bit.

Despite the difficulty of the exercise, some of the results were pretty impressive.

Homework: Do "Multiplication Properties," pages 62-63 in the math book. Do "Making Change 3" worksheet. Do "How does your Garden Grow" on the back of the math answer sheet. Do the spelling wordsearch.

Quick Post

2011-10-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

Tuesdays is a pretty busy day for me, so I am just going to post the homework.

Homework: (1) Do "Patterns of Facts," pages 60-61 in the math book. (2) Do the spelling jumble. (3) Do "Making Change 2." (4) Do "Patterns, Patterns" on the back of the math answer sheet.

Marvelous Monday

2011-10-03T13:50:00.000-07:00

Homework: (1) Do “Meanings of Multiplication,” pages 57-59 in the mathbook. Also do “Hurray Array” on theback. (2) Do “Making Change 1” worksheet. (3) Sort spelling words by long I pattern. Not all words will beused.

Light and Dark

2011-09-28T14:35:00.001-07:00

It was yet another great day in room 19. We started with journal writing and language activities as usual. Our topic today was "What would you do if you found a 50 dollar bill on the ground?" Our answers were varied but all great. We looked at the difference between simple and compound sentences. This will help the students start to do some sentence combining, one of our principal exercises for developing the trait of writing fluency.

After checking homework, we went to the computer lab where Ms Richards introduced the idea of the LAUSD Digital Library. This is a large collection of premium resources - like Encyclopedia Britannica online - which the the students can access from computers on the LAUSD network.

In Science, we continued our experimentation with darkling beetles and isopods. Today the students did an investigation to see whether the insects preferred light or darkness. They created an environment in their runways where the animals could choose one or the other, and observed their choice.

Homework: (1) Do “Picture…Equation,” pages 44-46 in the envision Mathbook. Do the “Test Prep” on pages 48-49. Do “Flying High” on the back. (2) Do the Science crossword puzzle. (3) Do “Middle Zeroes 2” subtraction practice paper. (4) Do spelling wordsearch.

More Bugs!

2011-09-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

I'll update this later. Just the homework for now.

Homework: (1) Do “Subtracting Across Zeroes,” pages 42-43 in the envisionMath book. Do odd only today as the skill is also covered on the other mathworksheet. Also do “Transportation Conclusions” on the back. (2) Do “Amazon Rain Forest Journal” questions. Students willneed the Science Resources book for this. (3) Do spelling sentences for each of the 20 words on the “KidReporter” words. (4) Do “Middle Zeroes 1” subtraction practice paper.

Bugs

2011-09-26T14:14:00.000-07:00

What a whirlwind of a day! We had a great day in room 19, but I felt like I never had a chance to stop and catch my breath!

We began by reviewing simple subject and complete subject. All of this will help us to understand compound sentences. One of our major writing goals in fourth grade is get the students away from writing only simple sentences "The cat chased the dog" to more complex ones with subordinate clauses like "Eager for revenge, the cat chased the dog." We started learning the vocabulary for this week's Treasures story, "Kid Reporters." We also evaluated a couple more anonymous stories for how well they score on the Ideas rubric.

Science was super fun today. In fact, it was so fun I didn't have time to even take a picture of them working. The students made "runways" today which they will use tomorrow for our work with darkling beetles and isopods. These runways look something like old-fashioned pencil boxes though they are made out of cardboard and aluminum foil. The students had a little time today to get some observations of the insects. Here is a stock image of a darkling beetle.

And here is another Google Image picture of an isopod. These are often called "pill bugs" or "roly polies" because they roll into a ball.

Tomorrow I will hopefully get pictures of our students with our bugs. After lunch, we read another chapter of Island of the Blue Dolphins and we also worked some more on body percussion. At Mixing, I worked with the students on doing hurdles on the track. These are really cones, not the long bars you see at the Olympics, but the students took them just as seriously.

Homework: (1) Do “Subtracting Whole Numbers,” pages 40-41 in the mathbook. This is straightforward subtraction, nothing strange today! They will need scratch paper. (2) Read “Isopods and Beetles,” pages 93-97 in the ScienceResources book and answer the questions. (3) Do the spelling jumble for the “Kid Reporters” spellinglist. (4) For “extra credit,” do “So Many Decisions” on the back ofthe math answer sheet.

Pretty Ordinary

2011-09-22T14:20:00.000-07:00

Today was just an ordinary day. Nothing wrong with that: in fact, they're probably the most important for steady learning.

We worked today in grammar on the difference between complete and simple predicate. We read a story about The Arabian Nights that gave a little background to the "Ali Baba Bernstein" story. We looked more closely at the ideas trait in writing, and the students used the rubric to explain why one anonymous writing sample had poor ideas while another had good ideas. To make sure they were concentrating only on ideas, both of them had pretty poor spelling. They went to Mr. Pratt for Social Studies. We began exploring body percussion in music. This is using snapping, clapping, patsching and stomping as a way to use the human body as a percussion instrument. We had our usual mixing for art, music, and physical education. In math we are studying the difference between too much and too little information in solving word problems.

Homework: (1) Do "Missing or Extra Information," pages 34-35 in the enVision Math book. (2) Do "Remembering Details" and "Sequencing Events" worksheet. The students will need their Island of the Blue Dolphins for this. (3) Do the "Subtraction with Regrouping 4" worksheet. The students will be tested on this skill tomorrow. (4) Do the "Ali Baba Spelling wordsearch. As usual, the spelling test will be tomorrow. (5) Do "Bird Houses" on the back of the math answer sheet.

Technological!

2011-09-21T10:06:00.001-07:00

Today was our first session in the Tech Center. The students were given an orientation to the computer lab by Ms Richards. They learned her policies and procedures and she talked to them about some materials which may be helpful to have for Tech Center. They then created a user profile in the Mavis Beacon typing program and worked on using home keys.

After lunch, I gave them time to work on the "final drafts" of yesterday's art project. At 1:00, they went to their different "mixing" areas: art, drama, or physical education. In math, we are continuing out work with estimation and mental math. This is usually the hardest chapter of the entire year for students and definitely the least fun for me to teach. If it weren't so darn important a life skill I'd happily skip it!

Homework: (1) Do "Estimate Sums and Differences," pages 32-33 in the enVision Math book. (2) Write a sentence for each of the twenty spelling words. Students have the list from Monday. (3) Do "Subtraction with Regrouping 3." (4) Do "Camping Trip" on the back of the math answer sheet.

Last Long Tuesday

2011-09-20T14:30:00.000-07:00

Today was our last late Tuesday. The professional development schedule,with the 1:30 dismissal, starts next week.

We read the "Ali Baba Bernstein" story today as well as working more on subject and predicate. The students are learning about California landforms with Mr. Pratt while I planted terrariums today with his students. I hope they come at as well as ours did!

Since we had the extra time today, we started an art project. The skill in today's art lesson was life drawing from different points of view. A number of the classes were on the yard for teacher release time, so our students went out to watch them play.

As they played, out students carefully observed and drew them.

Tomorrow they will convert these plain-aire sketches into pen and ink drawings.

Homework: (1) Do "Using Mental Math to Add and Subtract," pages 29-30 and "Algebra," page 31. Look at the three strategies on page 28 to understand "compensation," "breaking apart," and "counting on" strategies. Also do "Mental Puzzles" on the back of the answer sheet. (2) Do the word jumble on this week's spelling words. (3) Do "Subtracting with Regrouping 2".

Yet More Growth

2011-09-19T15:39:00.001-07:00

Sorry this one is a little late being posted. The district’s security measures are making it very difficult to connect with https: websites like blogger. It took me a while to find a workaround.

As you can see from the picture below, our students were thrilled to discover how much their plants had grown over the weekend. It was the first thing that grabbed their attention when they came in the door. They could barely wait until it was science time to do their measuring.

We did some other things, too. We studied subject and predicate. We learned the vocabulary for this week’s story, “Ali Baba Bernstein.” The students were introduced to California history with Mr. Pratt. We read a part of a chapter from Island of the Blue Dolphins. In math, we’re slogging through rounding and estimation.

Homework: (1) Do “Rounding Whole Numbers,” pages 26-27 in the math book. (2) Sort the spelling words into groups depending on how they make the long a sound. Some words will not fall into any category because they are vocabulary term. (3) Do the “Subtraction with Regrouping 1” worksheet. (4) Do “Rounding Around” on the back of the math answer sheet.

Assessing

2011-09-16T11:08:00.001-07:00

Fridays are a good day for assessing progress in many classrooms, and room 19 is no exception. We do not only have tests on Friday, nor is Friday only about taking tests, but it is the day when the students are most likely to be tested. Today we had a math quiz, a spelling test, and a reading test. This weekend I will send links to the gradebook for those people who have given me their email addresses and you can see how well your child did.

Students also did so assessing of their own, in this case the growth of their plants. They are justifiably excited about how well their terrariums are doing! We started work on a crossword puzzle with lots of words about environments. Last year, this caused a bit of a meltdown as students tried to do a crossword puzzle for the first time, but this year our students took to it like the proverbial ducks to water.

After recess, we read another chapter of Island of the Blue Dolphins. The students went to their different mixing activities: art, drama, or physical education. We finished the day, as usual, with math. Topic 2 in the math book deals with rounding and estimation. This is such an important life skill for the students, but they really don't like it much. Chapters like this are when math teachers begin to understand what it's like to be a dentist!

Homework: (1) Finish the "Exploration 1 Vocabulary" crossword. (2) Do "Rounding," pages 24-25 in the math book. "Quick Math" on the back of the answer sheet is relatively easy, so there's no reason why everybody shouldn't do it.

Growth

2011-09-15T11:21:00.001-07:00

Today we started, as we usually did, with journal. Our topic today was "Something funny that happened to you" and there were indeed some very amusing anecdotes that the students related. I was impressed how many of the students showed the ability to laugh at themselves. That's a great sign of maturity! We went on to discuss more about the different types of sentences. We read a short biography of Cesar Chavez in the reader and discussed how it related to the main story. The students had some great insights.

We worked after recess on starting to understand the "Ideas" rubric for the 6+1 Traits of Writing program. These scoring guides are written in "teacher talk" so our task was to "translate" them into words the students could understand. It was not altogether easy activity, but we finally managed to gain the appropriate comprehension of phrases like "The writing seems to be writing from knowledge or experience; the ideas are fresh and original." Just before lunch, we stopped to look at the terrariums. All the groups have something growing! They measured the growth in centimeters and recorded them in their Science journals.

We took our math test after lunch. The results are on the gradebook, and I am in the process of setting up parent emails. If you have already sent me an email I will have you set up by the weekend. The students will have an opportunity to take a second version of the test when we take the Topic 2 test. They will receive the better of the two grades. After correcting the test and recording our grades, we took off for our different mixing classrooms and activities.

Then, after we returned from our afternoon mixing the students completed the gesture drawing project that they started on Tuesday. It's a fun activity for them, and most of the completed works were great!

Homework: (1) Do “Developing Thinking Skills.” Students will probably needtheir Science books for this. (2) Do spelling sentences for spelling words 11-20. (3) Do “Addition with Regrouping 4.” The skill will be testedtomorrow. (4) Do the spelling wordsearch.

Again, if the summary of “My Diary: From Here to There” was not turned inyesterday, it should be done tonight.

Thanks!

2011-09-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

A big thank you to all the parents who came to last night's meeting. I thought it was really productive. Please do send me an email with your name and your child's name so I can set you up on the gradebook.

We did have a busy day in room 19. We started out with our journals, and then went on to reviewing the story from the new reader. We worked on sentence types and developing inferences as we read. After recess, we check our terrariums again. The students were delighted to see almost everything starting to grow. We also read about the rain forests. We will be developing our compare and contrast skills with rain forests and deserts over the next couple days.

After lunch, we read the climactic fourth grade of Island of the Blue Dolphins where the residents of Ghalas-at fight the more heavily armed Aleuts and suffer terrible losses. We are starting to look at rhythm in music. We did our afternoon mixing and we talked about making lists and tables in math. The math pages are challenging tonight, but since tomorrow is the test, concentrate on the review pages.

Homework: (1) Do “Make and Organized List,” pages 16-17 and “Test Prep”pages 18-19. Of this section, the "Test Prep" is the most important part. Don't spend too much time on pages 16 and 17. (2) Do “Tropical Rain Forests” study questions. (3) Write sentences for spelling words 1-10. (4) Do “Addition with Regrouping 3." Also be sure thatthe summary for “My Diary: From Here toThere” is finished as soon as possible. It does not necessarily have to be done tonight.

Hope to See Everyone at 5!

2011-09-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

Just a short post since we will be having our meeting tonight.

Homework: (1) Do “Understanding Zeroes,” pages 14 and 15. “The NumberGame” on the back is optional. (2) Finish the “Deserts” questions in science. Students hadabout 25 minutes in class to start this. (3) Do “Addition with Regrouping 2.” (4) Do “Review of Cursive Letters 5.”

Chuseok

2011-09-12T14:35:00.000-07:00

Today we started work on our new reading series, "California Treasures." It is not that much different from our old Open Court series, so it should not be too hard an adjustment for either the teacher or the students.

In Science today we planted our terrariums. Students placed the potting soil in the containers and then planted rows of corn, peas, barley, radish, and clover. We'll be monitoring their growth over the next couple weeks as well as discussing the environmental factors which affect their growth. They had fun doing it today!

Today we also started our afternoon mixing program. All the fourth grade students will be receiving two sessions of physical education each week and one lesson each of drama and music. The classes are all mixed up so that students can have the experience of working with students from other classes. It will take a while for everybody to get used to it, but I think it will be great!

We finished the day with a celebration of Chuseok, the Korean harvest festival. Students from room 16 made a presentation to us.

They explained the traditions associated with the holiday and also fed us songpyeon, the traditional rice cakes. They were delicious!

Homework: (1) Do “Comparing and Ordering Numbers,” pages 11-13 in the mathbook. Try “Follow the Leader” on theback if you can. Don't worry about this one if it seems too hard. (2) Do “Addition with Regrouping” worksheet. (3) Do the spelling scramble. (4) Do the cursive review sheet.

CELDT

2011-09-09T14:31:00.001-07:00

Today was a bit of an unusual day due to California English Language Development Test, or CELDT. This state-mandated test is given to students who are designated as English Language Learners each fall to determine their level of English proficiency and to monitor their progress in learning conversational and academic English. For teachers, it is probably the most annoying test of the year. Since only a few of your students take it, it's hard to know what to do with everybody else. And that really is a problem because it is not the kind of test that you can just give to kids and have them sit happily at a table and work by themselves. There are lots of directions to present, even on the written portions of it, and big sections assessing listening skills which the teacher has to read aloud. And then there is a section of the test evaluating speaking skills which has to be given one-on-one. This is the kind of thing that people in Sacramento who haven't seen a classroom in 20 year dream up. But we have to give it.

The fourth grade teachers at Third Street work together quite well, so we decided to team for CELDT. Mrs. Choi agreed to give the listening, reading, and writing parts of the tests to the all the fourth graders who had to take it. There were 8 students in room nineteen who were in that category. That created a bit of a conundrum for me. After all, with so many students gone, I did not want to introduce anything really new because the students who were off to take the test would miss it. So we spent the morning doing a bit of this and that. We worked some more on life maps. Since rubrics will be an important tool in our writing program, we talked about rubrics and students worked to create their own rubrics on a 1, 3 , and 5 point scale. We finished any work left undone from Wednesday and Thursday.

After recess, we did math. Math is usually an afternoon activity, but I knew that the students taking the CELDT test would be taking the oral section of the test in the afternoon and I did not want them to miss math. Our topic today was place value in the millions. I was pleased by how well our students did at reading and writing large numbers. This was a part of the book that really was difficult for many in last year's class.

After lunch, Mr. Pratt and I took all the fourth graders who were not taking the oral section of the CELDT and supervised them on the yard. It was "free play" physical education. They could choose their activity, but they had to be doing something, not just sitting under a tree. It is not the finest form of PE instruction, but there is only so much you can do with 90 students and 2 teachers.

Mrs. Choi, the fourth grade teacher, was assisted by Mrs. Choi, our school's coordinator, and Mrs. Cha in giving the time consuming oral part of this test. Big thanks to them for agreeing to take on this job!

Monday things will start to return to normal.

Homework: (1) Do “Millions,” pages 8-9 in the math book. Do “PuzzlingPlace Values” on the back of the math answer sheet. (2) Do “Cursive Letter Formation 3”.

The Real First Day

2011-09-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

The second day of school in many ways is the first real day. There are so many special things to do on the first day that it is hardly a typical day at all. The second day starts to become a typical day, and with that, the students start to learn the procedures they will follow for the whole year.

We started out today, as we will in all the days to come, with our journal activity. Today they wrote about their favorite room in their house or apartment and also worked at distinguishing sentences from phrases or fragments. Our first theme in the new reading series is "Growing Up" and we did a couple activities to introduce this theme. First, the students started to create life maps. They will finish these tomorrow, so there will be some examples on tomorrow's blog post. They also created short free-verse poems which contrasted their lives when they were young to their lives today. Here is an example:

After recess, we started on our Environments unit in Science. The students completed a Circle Map and a quickwrite to summarize what they already knew about Environments. We read a short selection on terrariums and the students answered questions on it. They will be making terrariums next in Science, probably on Monday.

After lunch, we started reading Island of the Blue Dolphins. Besides giving the students an actual book to read instead of the mere selections from books provided in the reading series, Island provides them with a great introduction to the native peoples of California and the era of the Spanish exploration, a key part of fourth grade history.

We also started our rhythm unit in music. Today we were concentrating on the learning what beat and meter are. The students ran in place to find their own heartbeat, and we talked about the steady pulse which is the heartbeat of music. We tapped and clapped to our heartbeats, and then saw how much easier it was to keep up that pulse if there was a sequence of strong and weak beat. We practiced passing a hand drum and hitting it on the strong beat.

We started our work in the math book today. Our first chapter is on place value. Today we concentrated on numbers up to 100,000. We talked about standard form, word form, and expanded form.

Homework: (1) Do “Cursive Review” worksheet (2) .Do “Addition, No Regrouping 2” worksheet. (3) Do “Thousands,” pages 5-7 in the math book. Put all answers on your answer sheet. Also do “Changing Places” on the back of the answer form.

A Fantastic First

2011-09-07T13:57:00.000-07:00

We had a fantastic first day in room 19, despite the miserably hot weather. This year our class consists of 29 students, 18 girls and 11 boys. That's a first; usually we have more boys in room 19.

We started out today with the students working on an interest inventory and a reading pretest. The inventory helps me to help the students pick books in the library as well as giving me a better sense of who they are as young people. The reading pretest lets me know who my strong readers are and who will need a little extra assistance.

I went over a lot of rules and procedures with the students. The rules are pretty basic: follow directions, keep your hands and feet to yourself, etc. The students know these basic conduct norms already. The procedures are less intuitive, and I don't expect the students to master them right away. They learned how to enter and exit the room, how to line up after recess and lunch, where to get blank paper and where to place completed work. We'll be working for the next two or three weeks at really mastering these because once procedures are automatic the management of the class become pretty painless for both teacher and children.

We worked in partners to introduce ourselves and to learn about each other. The students interviewed each other using some questions I gave them. They then turned the answers into a rough draft of a paragraph with topic and concluding sentences. I helped them edit the draft, and they made a final copy. That took us up to lunch.

After lunch, the students worked again with their partner, this time to draw portraits. Some of their work was really excellent!

We finished the day with a math pretest. This assesses what they will learn during the year. It's a hard test, and it does not count for their grade. Nevertheless it gives me a good idea of who will need more or less assistance in math this year.

Homework will be light at first and grow a little heavier as we start on regular academic work this week and next.

Homework: (1) Do "Addition, No Regrouping 1" worksheet. (2) Do the "Cursive Review 1" worksheet.

Welcome!

2011-09-06T18:50:00.001-07:00

All is ready, as you can see, for a new year in room 19. I look forward to seeing meeting everyone tomorrow.

Please mark your calendars right away for our fourth grade Back to School Evening on Tuesday, September 13 at 5:00 pm. All the fourth grade teachers will be meeting with families to go over our program for the year.

A Peaceful Day After

2011-06-07T14:14:00.000-07:00

Sorry for a couple days without posts, but I think you know how busy we've been! A big, big thank you to all the parents who helped out on Friday and Monday with costumes and make up. A big thank you also to the parents who provided refreshments on Monday. And also thank you for being there for the performance of Oliver! It meant so much to the students.

Today was a typical end of the year day. We started by picking up books that we're finished with like Open Court and the math book. We also clean out our desks and washed them inside and out. After 45 minutes of noise and confusion, we then had some quiet work to calm the teacher's nerves. The students worked on their coordinate grid skills by translating coordinate points into pictures. Here's a sample:

After recess, the students went to Mr. Pratt for Social Studies and room 7 students came to me for Science. After lunch, we read chapter 8 of A Wrinkle in Time. In this chapter, Charles Wallace, now completely controlled by the evil force behind the Man with the Red Eyes explains to the others that no one is ever unhappy on Camazotz because they are all alike and no one thinks to deviate from the rules.

Homework: (1) Write a summary of chapter 8 of A Wrinkle in Time. This summary can be shorter, about half a page. (2) Do the math worksheets on Percentage, Factors, Division, and Multiplication. Note that the check step is optional for the division today.

Pleasant

2011-06-02T16:10:00.000-07:00

A day as pleasant as the weather. We worked on illustrations for A Wrinkle in Time as well as reading another chapter. This one was a particularly good chapter where the children enter the enormous CENTRAL Central Intelligence and come face to face with the evil man with the red eyes. We worked with pieces of granite and five other minerals to try to determine through examining color, hardness, luster, and cleavage which of those minerals helps constitute granite. This kind of "field work" is not nearly as easy as giving the children a fact to memorize, but it builds so much deeper knowledge of geology. We worked some more with solving and simplifying algebraic equations. They're doing great!

Homework: (1) Write a summary for chapter 7 of A Wrinkle in Time. Be sure to have a good topic sentence such as “In this chapter, the children meet the man with the red eyes at CENTRAL Central Intelligence who seems to put a trance on Charles Wallace.” Be sure to sequence or transition words. (2) Do the “Multiplying Fractions” worksheet. (3) Do the Science study questions.

Camazotz

2011-06-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

Today we did only a few things, but I think we did them well. We read chapter six of A Wrinkle in Time. This is often a middle school book, but our students are doing amazing well with it and having a good time reading it, too. In this chapter, the three children arrive on the planet Camazotz to find Meg and Charles' father. This planet, which is under the control of the dark power, is both familiar and quite strange.... We also practiced some key scenes and a song from Oliver! We had a "free play" PE so that Mrs. Caruso could help perfect the "I'd Do Anything for You" choreography. In math, since we are finished with the textbook, we are working on the Hands-On Equations program. It's an exciting way to teach Algebra, and it is astounding to see the children solve equations I never encountered until eighth grade!

Homework: (1) Do summary for chapter six of A Wrinkle in Time. Use a topic sentence such as “In chapter six the three children go to the planet Camazotz to find father.” Be sure to use sequence words like then, next, after, finally, first, last, etc. This should be at least ¾ of a page. (2) Also, do the “Multiplying Fractions” worksheets. Be sure to simplify to lowest terms.

2011-05-31T11:30:00.001-07:00

Boxing Day

2011-05-27T15:11:00.000-07:00

Plodding Along

2011-05-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 1-5 ten times each. Write one sentence for each word. The sentence must accurately reflect the meaning of the word. Students may need to use a dictionary here for help. The words are repulsive, sacrastic, savagely, stifled, and vicious. (2) Do the chapter four study sheet for A Wrinkle in Time. (3) Do “Classifying Words” and “Getting the Main Idea” worksheets. (4) Do “Use Reasoning,” pages 460-461 and “Test Prep,” pages 462-463 in the math book. Also do “Story Time” on the back of the answer sheet. There will be tests on both Topics 20 and 19 tomorrow. (5) Do "What's X?". We will work on this skill all this week and it will be tested on Friday.

Quick!

2011-05-25T14:49:00.000-07:00

Today went by quickly. We checked, corrected, and discussed homework. We read another chapter of A Wrinkle in Time. We went to Tech Center. The students learned about Ishi, the last of the Yahi people, with Mr. Pratt. Ishi's life reveals that very deeply troubling part of the Gold Rush as well as the some more uplifting parts of human nature. In math, we learned to express probability in fractional form.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 1-5 ten times each. Write one sentence for each word. The sentence must accurately reflect the meaning of the word. Students may need to use a dictionary here for help. The words are frenzy, gorgeous, intention, intently, and luxurious. (2) Do “Adding Endings” and “Listening for Syllables” worksheet. (3) Do “Classifying Word Groups” worksheet. (4) Do “Writing Probability as a Fraction,” pages 457-458 in the math book. Also do “Toss or Spin” on the back of the answer sheet. (5) Do "What's X?". We will work on this skill all this week and it will be tested on Friday.

Yet Another Great Day!

2011-05-24T14:26:00.000-07:00

As usual, we had a great day. We checked, corrected, and discussed our homework. We read another chapter of A Wrinkle in Time. We worked with room 7 on the really hard part of "Who Will Buy?" where four independent parts are singing simultaneously. Many high school choruses would have problem with this, but our students are making astounding progress.

After recess, the students went to room 7 and I worked with those fourth graders on Science. After lunch, we worked on peer revisions and edits to our tree house stories and we studied some more things with probability.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 1-5 ten times each. Write one sentence for each word. The sentence must accurately reflect the meaning of the word. Students may need to use a dictionary here for help. The words are disillusion, dispersed, essence, exclusive, and ferocious. (2) Do “Outcomes and Tree Diagrams,” pages 454-455 in the math book. Also do “Triangle Shapes” on the back of the answer sheet. (3) Do the Wrinkle in Time study sheet. (4) Finish the final draft of the tree house composition.

Back to Normal

2011-05-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 1-5 ten times each. Write one sentence for each word. The sentence must accurately reflect the meaning of the word. Students may need to use a dictionary here for help. The words are compulsion, confidingly, crevice, decipher, and dilapidated. (2) Do the study sheet for chapter 1 of A Wrinkle in Time. Be sure to use complete sentences. (3) Do the "Using Short Vowels" worksheet. (4) Do the "Making Compounds" worksheet. (5) Do "Finding Combinations," pages 452-453 in the math book, and do "Is it Possible?" on the back of the answer sheet. (6) Do "What's X?". We will work on this skill all this week and it will be tested on Friday.

Tree Houses

2011-05-18T14:36:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of the CST Mathematics Test. It seemed to go pretty well, though as always I studiously avoided looking at the test or how the students were doing on the test. All I would notice would be the wrong answers and it would drive me crazy.

We did another Science experiment today, or rather, we started one. We took the vinegar solution from the four rock samples we had worked on yesterday and poured them into small plastic lids to dry. Once they're dry, the students will examine the crystals which are left. More on that as it happens....

In the afternoon, we had some "free choice" activities in Physical Education and we did some art. Our lesson today in art dealt with "formal balance." This is an art term which refers to symmetrical or almost symmetrical shapes. Architecture is good for studying this, and the students drew their ideal tree house. The irregularities of the tree insured that the symmetry would not be perfect, but there would still be similar shapes and weights on both sides. Some of the work the students did, as you can see, were just wonderful.

Homework: None today! Have a great day!

CST, Day 2

2011-05-17T13:59:00.000-07:00

Today was our second day of the California Standards Test in Language Arts. I think the students did pretty well on it, though I studiously avoid looking over their shoulders at the answers they put down. It would drive me crazy because all I would see would are the wrong answers!

Testing took up most of the morning until recess. After recess, we did Science. We are continuing our look at rocks and how geologists study rocks. We looked at hardness and the Mohs Scale before, and the students learned how to scratch rocks to help identify minerals. Today we looked at using acid to determine the presence of calcite or calcium carbonate in rocks like limestone and marble. The students were slightly disappointed that they did not get to use "real" acids like hydrochloric or sulfuric acids, but they were pleased to discover just how much of a chemical reaction a weak acid like household vinegar could produce. Notice all the fizz in the vial below.

We practiced the song "Who Will Buy" from Oliver! This involves four independent parts, so I am astonished at how well they are doing with it. We have talented students here in rooms 19 and room 7. We also finished our unit in math. We will not have the test until Friday. It seems a little much to give a regular math test on days when they will have the CST math test.

Homework: (1) Do the Science study questions. (2) Do "Draw a Picture" on pages 444-445 and "Test Prep" on pages 446-447 of the math book. I did not seem to copy the answer page here, so do the work on a piece of regular notebook paper.

Technical Difficulties

2011-05-11T14:13:00.002-07:00

Today not everything seemed to go right. The pencil sharpener broke - though Mr. Pratt managed to fix it - and the DVD player wouldn't show my DVD of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Despite these problems, we had a reasonably productive day. We checked, corrected, and discussed our homework. We went to Tech Center where Ms. Richards had them doing some fun stuff with fractions and decimals. The students went to Mr. Pratt for History and Drama, and his students did rock scratching with me. I should figure out a better way to phrase that....

In the afternoon, we discussed nutrition and went out for some physical education. As usual, we did our rotations. We took our math tests after that. We didn't have enough time to correct them, but we will tomorrow.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 10 times each in cursive as well as one sentence. The words are laughter, likelihood, plumage, precious, and professor. (2) Do the "Adding, Subtracting Fractions" and "Factors" worksheet. (3) If necessary, finish Practice Test 4. We will correct this tomorrow.

Just the Homework Today

2011-05-10T14:05:00.001-07:00

Homework: (1) Write the spelling words ten times each in cursive and one sentence for each. The words today are chestnut, condition, desperately, handkerchief and judgment. (2) Complete the study sheet for chapter 17 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (3) Do pages Make a Table" and "Test Prep" pages 430-433-423 in the envision Math book.

Autry

2011-05-05T14:48:00.000-07:00

More Thanks!

2011-05-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

Again, thank you room 19 families for the lovely presents this week. A particular thank you for the Ralphs gift card. That really comes in handy!

Despite the heat, we had a great day. We read chapter 15 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where Aslan comes back from death. We have been reading this having students take the parts of the various characters and read what is in quotation marks while other students - or me, sometimes - reads the narration. This has been really successful both at encouraging expressive oral reading and attention to quotation marks and paragraphing. We went to Tech Center where most of the students finished work on their web pages. After recess, we did a writing assignment to focus on the skills of using transition words. After lunch, we continued our look at healthy eating by creating posters for different types of foods. We'll finish those later this week, and I'll post some examples. In Science, we worked on the scratch test some more using real rocks. In math we continued looking at functions and equations. Today we are making equations which use multiplication and division.

Homework: (1) Write the spelling words ten times each in cursive and one sentence for each. The words today are magnificent, offence, proceeded, resistance, and succeeded. (2) Complete the study sheet for chapter 15 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (3) Do pages "Multiplication and Division" pages 422-423 in the envision Math book. Also do "Experience Expressions" on the back of the answer sheet.

Remember that tomorrow is the field trip to the Autry Museum. Please bring lunch in a paper or plastic bag.

Aw Shucks!

2011-05-03T14:25:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me thank the families of room 19 for the lovely flowers. What a nice way to start the day!

We had a productive day as usual. We began by checking and correcting and discussing all our homework plus some of the test prep activities from last week. I was really impressed by how the students asked questions when they had a wrong answer to discover why it was wrong. That is just such a great sign of maturity.We also read the climactic chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when the White Witch kills Aslan.

In Science we are working not with Mock Rocks but with real rocks. The students worked on observing and describing the words today. Tomorrow they will be doing the scratch test to determine hardness. Since most of the rocks are white, that will be the key thing which will help identify them.

In math, we began our work on functions.

Homework: (1) Write the spelling words ten times each in cursive and one sentence for each. The words today are boulder, campaign, hesitating, horizon, and loneliness. (2) Complete the study sheet for chapter 14 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (3) Do pages "Addition and Subtraction" pages 420-420 in the envision Math book. Also do "Tournament Time" on the back of the answer sheet. (4) Do "Fractions and Mixed Numbers 2." We will be reviewing this skill all this week and will have a test on it on Friday.

Thanks!

2011-05-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

First of all, thanks to all the students and parents for contributing to our class project. I believe it went for a nice price on Friday night, and my congratulations to its new owner. Many thanks to the Nam and Kang families, too, for the always-in-short-supply copy paper, too. I do feel quite appreciated.

As usual, a very productive day. Since we had no homework to correct we went over our math tests from Friday. The results are on the gradebook. We read chapter 13 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We discussed compound subject and compound predicates in writing, and the students evaluated a writing sample for the trait of Organization, and they did a revision as a quickwrite.

After recess, we went to the auditorium to work some more on the play. It's coming along quite nicely. After lunch, the students reviewed nutrition in Health. We worked on batting skills in PE. And for math, we talked about formulas.

Homework: (1) Write the spelling words ten times each in cursive and one sentence for each. The words today are affected, arrange, assaulting, audience, and awkward. (2) Complete the study sheet for chapter 13 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (3) Do pages "Formulas and Equations" pages 418-419 in the envision Math book. Also do "Cricket Weather" on the back of the answer sheet. (4) Do "Fractions and Mixed Numbers 1." We will be reviewing this skill all this week and will have a test on it on Friday.

We Are The World

2011-04-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the always hard-working Alice Fries, we have a great auction item for Friday's Viva Third Street fundraiser. It's called "We Are the World" and it features our students portraying themselves in national costume or by something which indicates their particular passion. Thanks, Alice and class

Today was otherwise an ordinary Wednesday. We checked homework, read a chapter in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and we went to Tech Center. The students worked with Mr. Pratt in History and Drama. After lunch, we continued studying nutrition and went out to PE. I worked with the students, like I did on Monday, on baseball skills.

In math we're continuing to study coordinate pairs and graphing. Next week, we'll add Algebra and Functions to this mix. Isn't it amazing what students learn in fourth grade now?

Homework: (1) Write spelling words ten times each in cursive and write one sentence for each. The words are pavilion, reindeer, repulsive, schemes, and sensible. (2) Do Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe study sheet for chapter 11. Do "Length of Line Segments," envision Math pp 408-409 and "Amazing Grid" on the back of the answer sheet. (4) Do the division worksheet.

Another Great Day!

2011-04-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 10 times each and write a sentence in cursive for each word. The words today are harness, immediately, loaves, mustache, and noticed . (2) Do the study sheet for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe chapter 10. (3) Do "Shapes on a Coordinate Grid," envision Math pages 405-406 and "The Other Side of the Line" on the back of the answer sheet. (4) Do the division practice worksheet.

Welcome Back!

2011-04-25T14:25:00.000-07:00

I hope everybody had a nice Spring break. The dogs and I went up through the Eastern Sierra to Lake Tahoe and home through the Gold Country. It was fun.

We did the usual Monday things on this very productive first day school day of Spring. We began with some test prep stuff. We'll continue to do this for the next three weeks. We went on to read the ninth chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. For writing we worked on some sentence combining, evaluated a sample paragraph according to a scoring guide, discuss paragraphing, and started a rough draft. All in 45 minutes! Whew!

After recess we went to the auditorium and did some Oliver! practice. You could tell that it had been over a week.... But it will get better pretty quickly. After lunch, we talked about nutrition in Health. We had our usual PE rotations. I started baseball skills with the three classes. In math, the students are working on ordered pairs and coordinate grids. I never did that in fourth grade! Fortunately, it's pretty easy as long as you remember that the x-coordinate is horizontal and the y-coordinate is vertical.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 10 times each and write a sentence in cursive for each word. The words today are bruised, dazzling, delicate, delicious, and disappointing. (2) Do the study sheet for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe chapter 9. (3) Do "Ordered Pairs," envision Math pages 402-403 and "Treasure Hunt" on the back of the answer sheet. (4) Do the division practice worksheet.(5) If necessary, finish items 1-19 on practice test 3.

Getting Ready

2011-04-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

Tonight is Open House, and I hope I have a chance to see many of our families there tonight. Open House is not quite the Broadway show it is in some other classrooms, but I hope it is a pleasant time for parents to see what their children have and are learning. We spent some of today - but hardly all of it - getting ready for tonight.

After we checked our homework, we took a look at yesterday's science project. The groups observed that the water had partially dissolved the mock rocks. The students again wrote wrote on their lab papers what they saw - and, in the case of our couple groups, smelled.

Then we poured the liquid into evaporation dishes. When they have dried thoroughly, they will use the hand lenses to examine the crystals which remain.

Besides our "hands-on" work here, we read a chapter in the Science book and did some study questions. We also read another chapter in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We had play practice in the auditorium. The song "Who Will Buy" is starting to sound just beautiful!

We'll have a busy minimum day tomorrow. As usual, we will have a reading quiz and a spelling test. We will also have a math test. This will include, as usual, the "second chance" at the previous chapter. Please review both when doing homework.

Homework: Write spelling words ten times each in cursive and write a sentence for each. The words are precious, reliable, separate, silence, and wrenched. (2) Do the study guide for chapter 8 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (3) Do “Make a Graph” on pages 392-394 and "Test Prep" on pages 396-397 in the math book. Also do “Mystery Machines” on the back. (4) Do "Double Digit Division" worksheet.

Mocking

2011-04-13T22:30:00.000-07:00

Today we did all the usual things, but we had particular fun in our Science time. We are starting our Earth Science unit on rocks and minerals. Now geologists spend a lot of time breaking rocks apart with picks and hammers and cutting them with diamond saws. Alas, those school district lawyers won't let us do that in the classroom! So we did those kinds of explorations with mock or fake rocks today. They look a little like cookies, but they're hardly tasty.

The students worked in groups to break them apart and examine the material the mock rocks are made of. A key understanding of this unit is that rocks are different from minerals. Rocks are composites of different minerals.

After breaking the rocks apart and describing the components on their lab sheets, the students added 50 mL of water to some of the material to see how it would dissolve. We will examine these solutions a little more in tomorrow and maybe after the break, too.

In math, we looked at the difference between mean and median and also discussed range and mode.

Homework: Write spelling words ten times each in cursive and write a sentence for each. The words are occupant, permission, plunging, poisonous, and possibilities. (2) Do the study guide for chapter 7 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (3) Do “Median, Mode, and Range” on pages 390-391in the math book. Also do “Dazzling Data” on the back.

Mean!

2011-04-12T13:25:00.000-07:00

Quick post today. We read the sixth chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe today. We also wrote the rough draft of a descriptive paragraph. We'll use that tomorrow to help practice revision and editing. In math we talked about "mean" which is the preferred term in math for finding an average. I made lots of jokes about being mean. We're starting on an earth science unit so read read and talked a little bit about geologists, too.

Students had ample time to get started on their work while their teacher worked on his. So don't be surprised if your child says he or she already completed it. It was a productive day for all.

Homework: Write spelling words ten times each in cursive and write a sentence for each. The words are expected, expedition, experience, general, and mentioned. (2) Do the study guide for chapter 6 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (3) Do “Mean” on pages 388-389 in the math book. Also do “Stamps for Sale” on the back. (4) Do the "Two Digit Division" sheet.Be sure to show all work including the check step.

Spring Break's Coming!

2011-04-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

Well, as Spring Break draws near, it's harder for everybody to maintain focus, including the teacher! Still, we had a wonderfully productive day in room 19 - as usual.

We did not have much homework to check from Friday, so we were done with that in a flash. We continued on to reading the next chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In this chapter, Edmund denies going to Narnia and says that he was just pretending to have fun with Lucy. She is distraught, of course, and Peter and Susan begin to wonder if their parents' youngest child is losing her mind. So they go to the professor who surprisingly suggests that there are reasons for thinking that her story is true. We then finished our Quarter Three math test. In writing, we continued to examine real papers for their use of conventions and did a guided revision of a paragraph about an ugly crayon. It is a charming little story, but the author had a lot of problems with spelling, punctuation, and other mechanics, and we had fun finding these and correcting them.

We did a complete run through of Oliver! after recess. It went well, though it is still a mere shadow of how wonderful it will be in June. After lunch, we had our usual PE activities. We looked at line plots in math. This is a pretty easy skill - a way to make a quick bar graph on the fly. It has a way of showing up on the tests in May, too, so I could consider this as a bit of "test prep" as well.

Homework: Write spelling words ten times each in cursive and write a sentence for each. The words are apologize, apparently, arctic, consideration, and difficulty. (2) Do the study guide for chapter 5 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (3) Do "Following Directions," "Sequencing Events," and "Getting the Main Idea" reading skills sheets. (4) Do “Line Plots” on pages 386-387 in the math book. Also do “Life of a Hamster” on the back. (5) Do the "Multiplication Practice" sheet. Be sure to show all work.

A Bully Day

2011-04-08T14:07:00.001-07:00

I am not sure that the English refer to something wonderful as "bully" anymore, but it was in that old-fashioned kind of sense a bully day. It was a bully day for another reason, too, but I'll get to that in a moment.

We began by checking, correcting, and discussing our homework as we usually do. The other day I had a meeting with the other third and fourth grade teachers here, and most of them were complaining about how they have so many students who either do not do homework or else do it poorly. I had to make them jealous by telling about how great our room 19 students are at this! We went on to take the usual spelling and reading tests. These should be graded and on the gradebook quite soon. We then began to start the required Quarter 3 math test. This one is not really fair because it asks them about things that they will not study for a little while. So I gave them some help here; not the answers, mind you, but I helped them visualize the problems better so that they could think them through and find the answers themselves.

In the afternoon we had a very useful assembly on bullying from a woman from the district. She was good and really held their interest.

In the remaining part of the day, we had a short, and pretty easy, math lesson. Most all of them finished it during class or right after so I don't think there is really any homework this weekend. Enjoy!

The Double A Classroom

2011-04-07T14:25:00.000-07:00

In westerns there always seemed to be some ranch named the "Double A." Well, today room 19 was a "Double A" kind of place -- assessment and arts. We took our math tests today, and the results are recorded and on the gradebook. That's "assessment". We also worked hard on a couple things related to Oliver! We did a vocal rehearsal on the polyphonic section at the beginning of "Who Will Buy?" just like we did on Tuesday. It's starting to sound pretty good. And then Momo's mom worked with all the orphans on the choreography for "I'd do Anything." It's really cute!

We did some other things, too! We checked, corrected, and discussed homework, partly to help us get ready for the test. We also read the fourth chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In this chapter, Edmund meets the White Witch and begins to fall under her spell. And we also started our unit on data analysis and graphing in math.

Homework: Write spelling words ten times each in cursive and write a sentence for each. The words are professor, several, squirrel, usually, and wretched. (2) Do the study guide for chapter 4 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (3) Do "Listening for Syllables" and "Finding Base Words." (4) Do “Data from Surveys” on pages 382- 383 in the math book. Also do “State Predictions” on the back. (5) Do the "Adding and Subtracting Fractions" study sheet.

Cool

2011-04-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

After a couple of pleasantly warm, almost summer-like days, the clouds and fog hung around this morning, making it a cool day. We also did a number of interesting things today in room 19 today, so it was "cool" in that way, too.

As you can see in the picture, we went to Tech Center today. Students worked on their web pages about careers and activities related to technology. They worked really well in teams as they researched and composed their pages and embedded videos.

We also read another chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Again, students took turns reading the character voices with Eli, Megan, Olivia, Sarah, and particularly Austin doing stellar jobs. In the chapter we read today, Edmund makes his way to Narnia and meets the White Witch. We did a little test prep since it's getting to that time of year, and we worked more on problem solving skills in mathematics.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words ten times each in cursive and write a sentence for each. The words are knuckles, miserable, noticed, passages, and patience. (2) Do the study guide for chapter 3 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (3) Do "Changing Short Vowels", "Supplying Long Vowels", and "Making Compounds" skill sheets. (4) Do “Solve a Simple Problem” on pages 372- 373 and "Test Prep" on pages 376-377 in the math book. Also do “Tournament Time” on the back.

There will be a math test tomorrow. It will also have the "second chance" for test 14. There will be a History test on Friday. The students will be receiving their study sheets for this today.