Bugs!

Today was the day the fourth graders got their bugs! In fourth grade science, our first unit is Environments. Three weeks ago, we made our terrariums to help understand how plants are part of an environment. Now with these live organisms, we are exploring how animals are also part of the environment.

While the fifth grade students went off to Active Play with Coach Angel, the fourth grade students worked in small groups with tenebrio beetles and isopods. Technically, as one of the students already knew, isopods are crustaceans and not insects. But who needs to be technical when things are crawling around in the dirt

or on your finger!

The students are exploring the environment preferences of the two species. They looked at dry and moist soil today. They will explore light and dark on Monday.

We took our spelling test next, and Miss Martha is still grading those for us. After that, we went to music with Mrs. Phiri. The students learned more about rhythmic notation and solfege as well as doing a really cool rhythm poem about the beach. 

We went to second recess today. After that, the students took their math skills test, and they did fabulously well - almost all 4’s. When the fourth graders went to lunch, the fifth graders to went to the library to pick a tribe for research project. 

In the after noon, the fourth graders went off to PE. Both grade levels are exploring problem solving in math. One of the cool things, I’m discovering, is that not only are the fourth graders exposed to the fifth grade material, but I can challenge the fifth grade students to bring an extra dimension to the fourth grade work. For example, today the fourth graders did a problem to figure out how much five people would pay for a movie and parking. I challenged the fifth graders to take the information that the fourth graders had ably put in tabular form and to turn it into an algebraic expression. It took some prompting, but we finally came up with 10 + 6x!

Homework:  (1) Fourth grade math:  Do pages 68-69 plus “What Number am I?” Fifth grade math:  Do pages 69-40, 72-73 plus “Ice Cream Parlor Sense.” (2) Fifth grade History: Read the book on the selected tribe and write a list of at least 20 facts about them. (3) Fourth grade science:  Do “Isopods and Beetles” study sheet.