Halfway There

It was another pretty busy day – at least for me. I had two meetings I had to attend between 8:30 and 9:30. Thanks to Jan Worthy and to Lee Garrison for helping with the class while I was gone. We had Tech Center today as well and the students worked their on their “podcast” PowerPoint presentations.

After recess we went to the auditorium and did a run-through of The Music Man. Mr. Pratt kept the rehearsal moving along productively.

Our unit in Treasures right now deals with animals and their habitats. Students are working on some pictures to along with these for our “Big Question” bulletin board. Some are pretty impressive, aren’t they?

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 11-15 five times each in cursive. Write one sentence for each word. (2) Do the Spelling Jumbles (3) Do "Writing Frames," page 283 and "Latin Roots" page 284 in the Practice Book. (4) Do the study questions on page 605 of the hardcover Treasures book. (5) Do “Area” pages 362-363 in the math book and “Perimeter” on the back of the answer sheet. (6) Do the “More X 3” practice sheet.

Hurried

It was a pretty hectic day! We had a couple good play rehearsals, plus we went over a new story in Treasures and introduced metric measurement.

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 1-5 five times each in cursive. Write one sentence for each word. (2) Do "Vowel Teams," page 277 and "Vocabulary" page 278 in the Practice Book. (3) Do “Metric Measurement” pages 355-356 in the math book. (4) Do the “More X 1” practice sheet.

Just a Regular Thursday

 

Homework: (1) Write spelling words 16-20 five times each in cursive. Write one sentence for each word. (2) Do “Articles,'” page 275, “Chronological Order,” page 276, “Synonyms,” p 271, and “Articles,” p 274 in the Practice Book. (3) Do the “What’s X? 4” practice sheet.

The Hollow Trees

Today’s highlight was a performance by The Hollow Trees, a folk singing group from Topanga Canyon. They were a lot of fun!

Fast

Tuesday’s are hectic, so here’s a quick post with just the homework.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 6-10 five times each in cursive. Write one sentence for each word. (2) Do “Author’s Purpose” page 267 and “Foreshadowing” page 270 in the Practice Book. (3) Do “Ordering Integers” on pages 340-341 of the math book. (4) Do the “Erosion” study questions. (5) Do the “What’s X? 2” practice sheet.

Springing Forward

This was the first day after the time change, and I’m happy to report that nobody came at 9:00 looking confused this year. I guess now that we all look for the times on our phones it helps us be a little more aware of the time change.

We did all the usual Monday stuff. We had some play practice after recess and I took all the students who will be in the chorus. These are the good singers – the other students will have speaking or dancing parts,

In the afternoon Holly Priebe-Diaz from the district led the students in an anti-bully assembly.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 1-5 five times each in cursive. Write one sentence for each word. (2) Do “Open Syllables” page 265 and “Vocabulary” page 266 in the Practice Book. (3) Do “Comparing Integers” on pages 338-339 of the math book. (4) Do the “Weathering” study questions. (5) Do the “What’s X? I” practice sheet.

Ordinary

It was a pretty quiet, ordinary Thursday today. We did more work on our “visual stories” and the rough drafts of the stories that they are telling. We went over homework. We read and discussed a story about desert animals in the Treasures book. We took a math test, but we will not get that corrected until tomorrow.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 16-20 five times each in cursive. Write one sentence for each word.  (2) Review the “Walk in the Desert” story in Treasures. Complete the desert animals adaptation chart we started in class. There should be 10 plants or animals and an adaptation for each. (3) Do page 255 in the Practice Book. (4) Do the “Identifying Minerals” study sheet. (5) Do Dividing Money 4 practice page.

The spelling word search is optional.

Stone Cold

What a weird week for weather! It seemed like July on Monday when we walked to the museum. Today it felt like December … in Fargo!

Despite the cold, we had a pretty good day. We started with more work on our “visual storytelling” and some students already began to turn these into traditional written stories. We read a selection from Treasures. We went to Tech Center where the students spent a lot of time on the typing program.

After recess, we had Science. The students were challenged to figure out which of the following minerals below are part of granite. We’ll be discussing this a bit more tomorrow.

We were supposed to have an assembly on bullying, but it was cancelled at the last minute. You learn to be flexible teaching fourth grade. So, we had time for some play practice for some of the students while others auditioned for chorus.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 11-15 five times each. Write a sentence for each word. (2) Do pages 253-254 in the Practice Book. (3) Do “Working Backwards” on pages 328-329 of the math book. Also do “Test Prep” on pages 330-331. (4) Do “Dividing Money 3”.

Writing Test

Today was the state writing test. This is the first part of the CST testing for fourth grade. I think the students probably did pretty well on it since they have had a lot of practice in writing stories.

After recess, Mr. Pratt worked with some of the students in the auditorium on a couple of the scenes from the play. I worked with most of the class and some of Mr. Pratt's students on algebra using the Hands-on Equations program.



Homework:  Write spelling words 6-10 five times each. Write one sentence for each word. Do the spelling jumble. Do pages 258 and 259 in the Practice Book.  Do "Words to Equations" on pages 325-326 of the math book. DO the “Dividing Money 2” practice sheet.

LACMA

We had a great field trip today to LACMA. It was a walking trip, and the weather was absolutely perfect. The students always complain about walking a couple miles, but this year I think they did the best ever at keeping up a good pace. We made it there in just under 40 minutes. That’s great since we had to stop to wait at the light for a couple changes to get everybody there.
At the museum, we were divided into groups of 7 or 8 students. Each docent gave a slightly different tour from the objects on display in the Art of the Americas galleries. Photography is prohibited in the museum during school visits, so I borrowed some public domain photographs to show a few of the things most of the groups saw.

One of these was a ceramic model of the Mesoamerican ball game.

Another was a screen depicting a native wedding celebration in Mexico in the colonial periods. The students were fascinated by the volador and no doubt wished that we could have one installed on our playground!

And, of course, what visit to LACMA would be incomplete without stopping and discussing David Hockney’s iconic “Mulholland Drive”?

We had lunch – always for students the high point of any field trip – at the amphitheater being the museum in the park. We kept up our brisk pace on the way home and came back in time for a math lesson and a head start on homework.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 1-5 five times each in cursive. Write one sentence for each word. (2) Do pages 262 and 263 in the Practice Book. Students will NOT be doing 262 and 264. (3) Do “Multiplication and Division on pages 322-323 of the math book.  (4) Do the “Dividing Money 1” practice sheet.

In Like a Lamb

We had a gentle beginning of the month both in weather and in our classroom climate. I’m pretty sure that both will continue to be great!

Other than orchestra being cancelled, it was a pretty normal Thursday. We started a writing project today and the first step in that was to tell the story visually – pictures, no words. We will be finishing that tomorrow and starting on the writing portion of it.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 16-20 five times each in cursive. Write one original sentence for each word. (2) Answer the “Critical Thinking” questions on page 527 of the hardcover Treasures book. Be sure to answer thoughtfully and in complete sentences. This will be collected and graded. (3) Do “Choosing Correct Meanings” worksheet. (4) Do “Equal or Unequal?” on pages 318-319 of the math book. Also do “Connection Detection” on the back of the answer sheet. (5) Do “Fractions 4” review sheet.

The word search is an optional review for the spelling test.