LACMA

Today was our field trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We walked there as did the students from room 16. It is not altogether easy walking 60 students and 10 or so adults two miles safely, but our students and our parent docents did an admirable job of ensuring student safety. We are so lucky at Third Street that such amazing attractions as LACMA are within walking distance from our school. At my old school, the closest place of interest was the Farmer John plant. Needless to say, we never went there for field trips!

At the museum, the students were divided into seven groups and assigned to a docent. Each docent picked slightly different pieces from the permanent collection to show their students. I went with one group. We started out by looking at and discussing David Hockney’s Mulholland Drive on the Way to the Studio, one of the museum’s signature pieces. 

To contrast this modern piece with an ancient one, we looked as this Assyrian bas relief from the ancient city of Nimrud. The students were intrigued to learn that the little marks in the center are actually writing in the ancient Akkadian script. Surprisingly, they never asked why this rather masculine god was carrying a purse. Most years I hear somebody ask that. 

We went to take a look a very different portrait, this time the Pompeo Batoni’s Portrait of Sir Wyndham Knatchbull-Wyndham, a young English aristocrat just completing his Grand Tour. The guide explained this portraits like these were kind of like pictures they might take to help remember a trip to Disneyland and helped them see the significant details in it. 

We looked a very different port air, Amadeo Modigliani’s Woman of the People. The students discussed why the artist might have drawn her eyes in such a peculiar way and made her chapped hands so prominent. 

We looked at a kind of un-portrait, Rene Magritte’s The Liberator. 

Lunch, of course, is a highlight of the day. 

We returned back to school where we had some time for PE, a chapter from By the Great Horn Spoon! and a little study hall so they would have less homework tonight.

Homework:  (1) Read pages 698-701 in the Treasures book. Copy and answer the questions on page 701. There will be a quiz on this story and “Leah’s Pony.” (2) Do "Identifying Minerals" questions. (3) Do the social studies review questions. There will also be a test over chapter 6 in the History book on Friday. (4) Do the Factors review sheet. 

Good Story (at last)

Occasionally there are some good stories in the Treasures series. Today was just that kind of day. We read Elizabeth Friedrich’s lovely story "Leah’s Pony.” Set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s, this beautifully written tale tells the story of a young girl who must sell her beloved horse to help save her family’s farm. 

In Science we finished up investigation 4. The students look at eight rocks and minerals investigating them for two new properties, cleavage and magnetism. Here one of the students discovered just how magnetic one of the rocks is!

We took our math tests today over topics 17 and 18, and the corrected tests are already on the grade book. We are also starting on the second plane geometry unit of the year. 

Remember, tomorrow is our field trip to LACMA. Sorry for the short notice, but our dates were abruptly changed on us. If you can walk with us, great. But we probably have enough volunteers from room 16 already. Remember to pack lunch for your child for tomorrow.

Homework:  (1) Write a summary of “Leah’s Pony.” This should be half a page or longer. Also copy and answer the questions on page 697 of the Treasures book. (2) Do Identifying minerals questions. This will be due Friday. (3) Do the social studies questions. This also will be due Friday. There will also be a test over chapter 6 in the History book on Friday. (4) Do the Factors review sheet. (5) Do “Congruent Figures,” page 438-439 in the math book. 

  Do Identifying minerals questions. Also give them the social studies questions. These will be due Friday

Not a Monday, but a Fun Day

We started the day in the Tech Center. The students are finishing their work on the biomes reports. They’re learning a lot about both environments and MS Word. Mr. Riko, as always, is a huge help.

We went to the auditorium to practice Annie. We concentrated today as we worked with Mr. Pratt on the second half of the play. Here Rooster, Lily, and Hannigan are singing “Easy Street.” 

And here the orphans are listening to the radio as Bert Healy sings, “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile."

After recess, we did more work on minerals. Students examined both familiar and unfamiliar rocks and minerals for various properties. Tomorrow we will show the students how to take this information and use an identification table to figure out what our mystery minerals are. 

Homework:  Very light tonight! (1) Do the factors review sheet. (2) Do pages 430-433 in the math book as well as the Quick Review and Problem of the Day. 

Depression? Yes. Depressed? Not Really!

The day outside was bleak and gray, but inside room 19 it was another lovely Monday. 

We started a new unit in the Treasures book today about “working together.” I am not quite sure how “working together” is all that different from “teams”, one of the earlier units, but who am I to question such things? Anyhow, the unit opener showed a pictures, similar to the one below, of a depression-era soup line. Since we are working on Annie, the students were interested to learn a little more about what life was like during the 1930’s. 

After recess, we turned our attention to Science. We’re starting a new investigation this week called “Take it for Granite” (somehow, students never get that joke). As a preliminary today, we introduced the students to the ideas of “streak” and “luster.” Here one of the girls is checking an unnamed mineral for its streak. We will use a mineral table later on to help identify these mystery minerals. 

In math, we continued our work with Cartesian coordinate grids. After mixing, we did more with our vanishing point perspective paintings. 

 

Homework:  (1) Sort the spelling words into categories. All have the /Ən/ sound. Create a table showing how each word makes that sound. (2) Do pages 314, 315, and 316 in the Practice book. (3) Find photograph of people working together to solve problems. This can be from a magazine or from an internet search. It should be fairly large, at least 5 x 7. (4) Do the factors worksheet. (5) Do pages 426-429 in the enVision Math book and “Video Playback” on the back of the answer sheet.

Walk-a-thon

Today was Walk-a-thon! And thanks to all of your wonderful generosity, our class had 100 percent participation!!! Yay!!! 

We started the day in the library. It was hard to keep our enthusiasm down and remember our library demeanor, but our students were up to it.

After library we went back to the room and finished correcting our homework. We were just about to get started on the spelling test when one of our wonderful parent volunteers came and escorted us to the yard for all the fun Walk-a-thon stuff. 

One of the best activities at the Walk-a-thon is the relay race with the students carrying cups of water. We “versed” room 18. 

Cup stacking is also super fun!

 

Homework:  None today. In fact, in honor of 100 percent, cursive is cancelled for the next four school weeks!

Putting Things in Perspective

It was a pleasant, uneventful day in room 19 today. We are getting ready for the big Walk-a-thon tomorrow. I am still hoping for 100 percent participation. I am offering a MONTH without cursive practice if we get contributions from EVERYBODY. 

Our first experiments with perspective last week were okay, but the students still did not completely understand the concept. So today we started a project with vanishing point perspective, something that they will finish tomorrow. First I explained the concept of vanishing point and how artists create special guidelines to help them reduce the size of objects correctly as the grow closer to the vanishing point. 

Then the students practiced with a picture of some train tracks. We like trains!

We will finish this project tomorrow.

We also learned how to graph functions today. I am so awed by how these students are doing things in fourth grade I never did until junior high!

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 16-20 ten times each in cursive and write one sentence for each. (2) Do pages 282, 284, 287, and 288 in the Practice book. (3) Do “Critical Thinking” on page 605 of the hardcover Treasures book. Be sure to copy the questions as well as answering them in complete sentences. (4) Do the Area and Perimeter Review 4 practice sheet. (5) Do the What’s X 4 practice sheet. (6) Do pages 424-425 in the enVision Math book and do “Gridlock” on the back of the answer sheet.

Also, the final draft of the mystery story, assigned a couple days ago, is due tomorrow. 

Wonderful Wednesday

A thoroughly wondrous Wednesday in room 19! We started the day with journals, as usual. Since the Common Core State Standards are big on the idea of persuasive writing, and the students will probably have to do some writing as part of the trial testing of the new examinations scheduled for next year, we are making sure they are comfortable with taking positions and supporting them with evidence. Today they had to pick the “best” biome and explain why it was better than others. I randomly picked some people to share their ideas with the class. We read a short selection from Treasures that we had skipped a couple weeks ago, and the students met for the first time with their literature groups to discuss the first chapter(s) of their books. 

After recess, the students were paired up randomly to read and respond to each other’s mystery stories. This will lead them to doing some final drafts that will be due on Friday. 

After lunch, we had lots of students going off to orchestra, so I gave the remaining students 45 minutes to get started on homework. So if they complain a lot tonight just say, “Hey! What were you doing after lunch?” After mixing we had a review of rules and functions and more time to get started on some simple assignments. 

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 11-15 ten times each and do a sentence for each one. (2) Do pages 277, 278, and 279 in the Practice book. (3) Do the back pages of the 31st State newspaper. (4) Do Area and Perimeter Review 3. (5) Do What’s X? 3. (6) Do pages 422-423 in the enVision Math book. 

Quick!

Most Tuesdays go by quickly but this seemed unusually fast. If only I could say the same for the faculty meeting that followed….

But before we go over what we did today, here is something I did not mention yesterday. We are working on perspective in art right now. It’s a HARD skill for fourth graders who are able to distinguish symbolic from realistic art, but have a difficult time making art that looks like the real work. Part of that is technical skill, of course, but a great deal of it is learning to see things somewhat differently. We went over a number of different ways for creating depth and distance in art. One of them is the idea that lines going away seem to come closer together (even though the actual distance does not change). This student could see this in a football field. 

Today we started out the day in the Tech Center. Students are completing their biomes project where they researched and wrote about the six major ecosystems of the world. They really concentrated as well on learning how to size and place pictures in a Word document. Returning to the classroom, we checked, corrected, and discussed homework. We started literature circles today and the students were assigned to specific books. You’ll be hearing more about this. 

After recess, the students worked with Mr. Pratt in the auditorium on Annie. The play is coming along quite well, but we are working with the students to speak lines more effectively and to use their faces and bodies to react to the words of other actors. In this scene, Oliver Warbucks, center, is meeting Annie, second from the right, for the first time. 

We skipped reading buddies today because Mr. Pratt was generous enough to give us an extra 25 minutes and we went to second lunch instead. In math, we are introducing the students to functions. They’ll be graphing them soon! What amazing things students are doing now in elementary school. I’m not sure I did that until ninth grade.

Homework:  (1) Do spelling words 6-10 (2) Do Area and Perimeter Review 2 (3) Also do What’s X? 2 on the back. (4) Do pages 420-421 in the enVision Math book.

Blog's Back

It’s been a couple tough weeks for this teacher. I was out for several days, and really intensely sick for a couple of them. Just coming back to school has been really tiring. 

We’ve been doing some cool stuff in Science. Students have been learning about calcite or calcium carbonate. This is a common rock forming mineral. They learned that one of the properties of calcite is that it reacts to acid by releasing carbon dioxide from the rock. Real geologists use hydrochloric acid to test for calcite, but we settled for a much weaker acid, white vinegar. 

The students watched as some rocks fizzed and as others did nothing. This help them determine which ones were rocks containing calcite and which ones were not. But they needed to be more certain. The students then poured some of the vinegar solution into an evaporating dish so that after a couple days they could compare the crystals - if any, to those of calcite.  

We did those things last Thursday and Friday. Today we did examined the crystals in the evaporating dishes. 

Homework:  (1) Do spelling words 1-5. The words are easy this week. We have no Treasures story this week, so I just grabbed and recycled a list from when I taught third grade. (2) Do the Calcite Quest on the back of the Science sheet. (3) Do the social studies worksheets. (4) Do the Area and Perimeter Review and the What’s X? work sheet. (5) Do pages 418-419 in the math book. 

Quiet Day

It was a typically quiet Monday. We started off with our journals and some grammar. We are looking at definite and indefinite articles this week. After that, we reviewed the difference between open and closed syllables and previewed this week’s spelling. We went on to discuss this week’s vocabulary words and read the vocabulary story.

We were supposed to watch an American Experience documentary about the gold rush after that but the MacBook malfunctioned and so we substituted math. We looked at rectangles with the same area but different perimeters today. For some reason the authors of our standards are obsessed with the relationship between perimeter and area. I suppose it is easy to test.

After lunch we read another couple chapters in The Cay and I showed them how to divide decimals. After mixing, I swapped out the MacBook for an old HP laptop donated to our classroom by Friends of Third, and we watched and discussed the first part of the film.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 1-5 ten times each in cursive and write a sentence for each word. (2) Sort the words into two categories – those with open first syllables and those with closed first syllables. We discussed this in class. (3) Do “Phonics” on page 265 and “Vocabulary” on page 266 of the Practice book. (4) Do Dividing Decimals 1 practice sheet. (5) Do pages 268-269 in the math book.

Minerals

We started out today with the students imagining how they might survive if their plane crashed into the Arizona desert. They wrote diary entries about how they survived.This was not completely morbid as the students had been studying in the Treasures reading this week how different animals survive in the desert. We had some good responses. We also reviewed the “Walk in the Desert” story and practiced Annie.

After recess, we split into Science groups. Each group was give pieces of calcite, quartz, gypsum, and fluorite, though they did not learn the names of those minerals until later. First the students observed the stones carefully looking for properties like color, mass, and texture. 

After discussing the limitations of some of those properties to help identify minerals, we discussed how hardness might be a good property to explore. I explained the scratch test to them, and they attempted to scratch each of the minerals with fingernails, pennies, and a steel paper clip. 

In the afternoon, we looked at how rectangles can have the same perimeter but different areas. 

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 14-20 ten times each and a sentence for each. (2) Do pages 262, 263, and 264 in the Practice book. (3) Do the summary and questions 1-4 on pages 563. Students should study the questions. The students had 25 minutes to work on this in the morning. (4) Read “Mining for Minerals” in the Science Resources book and answer the study questions. (5) Do Multiplying Decimals 3. Be sure to show all work. (6) Do “Same Perimeter, Different Area” on pages 368-369 in the math book. 

Contesting

A pretty quiet day. We finished reading “A Walk in the Desert” from Treasures. We started learning about the Gold Rush in history. We learned how to divide irregular geometric shapes to determine their area.

Probably the most fun thing we did today was to start working on the 90th Anniversary Logo Contest. This is something the parents are sponsoring for this spring’s ninetieth anniversary blast. Most of our students are still working on it, but there were a couple good ones among the early finishers.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 6-13 ten times each in cursive. Write an original sentence for each word. (2) Do pages 255, 258, and 259 in the Practice book. (3) Do the Gold Rush study sheet. Ignore the cartoon on the last page. That is part of a later assignment. (4) Do Multiplying Decimals 2. (5) Do "Irregular Figures," pages 365-366 in the math book. 

Habitats

It was a pretty quiet day back - a nice change from the feeding frenzy of Valentine’s Day on Friday! We worked on our survey reports in Tech Center. We started a new unit in Treasures about habitats. We went over what we already know about habitats before going on the read some of the first articles. In math, we looked at how to determine area (and, of course, what we mean by area) and the basic rules for multiplying decimals. 

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 1-6 ten times each and write a sentence for each one. (2) Do pages 253-254 in the Practice book. (3) Do Multiplying Decimals 1 practice sheet. (4) Do “Area,” pages 362-363 in the math book. 

Two Daze

No, that’s not a misspelling. I have had a bad cold and with the cough medicine I’ve been in a daze! Fortunately, our students are great and we’ve still had two very productive days (even though I’ve been calling everybody the wrong name….)

Yesterday we did the final part of our mock rocks experiment. The students looked at the crystals in their evaporating dishes and most of them figured out that they were looking at salt. This helped them to finally discover all the “minerals” they had in their mock rocks. 

Today we worked in Tech Center to start putting our Excel charts and graphs into reports in Word. These will be remarkably sophisticated when they’re done:  I bet they’ll be better than a lot of reports submitted to some corporate bosses! After that, we started reading and discussing My Brother’s Flying Machine, a retelling of the story of the Wright brothers from the point of view of their youngest sister. 

After recess, we read another chapter of The Cay and started working on customary measurement. We finished the day with reading buddies and some of the students worked with Mr. Pratt on blocking the first scene of the play.

Homework:  (1) Write sentences for words 6-10. (2) Do the spelling jumble. (3) Do the history activity sheet. (4) Do Mixed Numbers 2. (5) Do pages 351-352 in the math book. 

Subdued

Today was a pretty quiet day. We had our usual spelling, reading, and math tests. The students generally did well on all of those, and the results are already on the grade book. 

We also worked on subdued colors in art today. We talked about how adding a complementary color like yellow to violet reduces the intensity of the color. The students experimented with this by doing desert scenes. Many were quite good.

Homework:  Finish the pages 342-345 in the math book. There will be a test on Monday.

More "Mockery"

We started out today with the students writing down some ideas in their journals on how to protect themselves form earthquake injury.  We went on to check homework. We read the final selection for the week in Treasures and we went on to practice Annie for a bit.

After recess, we continued our investigation with the mock rocks. Today the students broke their mock rocks apart and separate them into pieces. The reason for this, they’ll learn later, is that rock are all composed of a variety of minerals and other materials. It’s part of what makes a rock a rock.

After they did this, they put a bit of the crumbly material from the rock into a vial and filled it with 25 milliliters of water. 

Tomorrow they will be taking some of this liquid and putting in into an evaporation dish. Monday, they will look at the crystals. All of this will help them to infer the materials, the “minerals,” that form their mock rock.

The afternoon was spent working on learning to order integers. Sometimes this confuses students, but this year we have such a smart class that they all grasped it right away. 

As I am not that keen on riding a bike in the rain, I gave them some time to get started on homework so I could leave at 2:30 without any pangs of guilt.

Homework:  (1) Write a half page summary of Earth Dragon. Copy the questions on page 497 and answer in complete sentences. There will be a quiz on the stories tomorrow. (2) Do the Mixed Numbers 4 review sheet. There will be a quiz on this tomorrow as well. (3) Do pages 340-341 in the math book. 

Making Up for Lost Time

I seem to have missed posting yesterday’s work. I guess I was just so excited about our faculty meeting. As the kids would say - not!

Yesterday the students continued work on their surveys in Tech Center. They learned how to computer the mean, median, mode, and range of a set of data. Pretty impressive for fourth grade, isn’t it? We started reading a really great story in the Treasures book about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

We also started our earth science unit yesterday. The students will be studying rocks and minerals, and their first investigation was observing a “mock rock,” a fake rock.

Finally on Tuesday we started a new unit in math on integers, introducing the students to the concept of negative numbers.

Today we began by journaling about a time when we were scared. The students had the option of writing a fictional account here, and some of the entries were quite creative. We checked homework and finished reading “Earth Dragon.” We discussed comparing negative numbers. Usually many of the students find the idea that -100 is SMALLER than -99 confusing, but not our students. They grasped the concept right away. We also read about and discussed the Mexican-American War and its impact on California.

As I have a dentist appointment today and cannot stay for homework club, I gave the students the last 45 minutes to get homework done. With luck, many of them will have a free evening.

Homework:  (1) Do the final draft of the five paragraph essay on Third Street School, past, present, and future. This needs to be in cursive, of course. (2) Do Mixed Number Review 3. (3) Do “Comparing Integers,” pages 338-339 in the math book. (4) Do the “Mexican War” study sheet. 

 

Another Quick Post

A busy and productive day. But I have to go home a little early today, so here is the homework.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 1-5 ten times each and write a sentence for each word. (2) Do a spelling sort. Two works belong in an “exceptions” category. (3) Do pages 229-230 in the Practice book. (4) Do the Science study questions. (5) Do Adding, Subtracting Mixed Numbers 1.

Creative

Instead of the usual journal entry, this morning we began with a writing assessment from the Treasures program. The prompt given with this unit was a little more creative than usual. It asked the students to create a new kind of car and asked them what they would do to help turn it from a dream into a reality. Many of our students did great work with this. 

Have you ever been bored on the road? Then try the Dive™ AquaDrive™! The AquaDrive™ is like an amphibious hybrid car. You can either charge it like a computer or pump gas into it. For colors, you just send in a color and we make it, even matte. This amphibious car has a special feature: you can drive it in the water! Made with light but sturdy metal converting wheels into propellers, it can drive on water.

To prepare for making the car, I would have to file a patent for the government. The symbol for the car could be the bottom front of the car with AquaDrive™ written underneath. I could find a company to invest in my product like kickstarted.com. I could have many workers and make a large factory. I could make the cars with steel-infused aluminum. For advertisements I could make Ferrari-style commercials, lots of YouTube ads, and large billboards. Those are my ideas for creating a car. 

We also practiced Annie. After recess, we corrected homework and discussed turning simple word problems into algebraic equations.  

In the afternoon, we read a chapter from The Cay and  learned about the Bear Flag revolt. After this, most of the students went out to physical education with Coach Angel and Mrs. Cha while I finished voice testing students from both room 18 and 19. 

We finished the day with a simple art project about complementary colors. The students had to make logos for companies or schools. Here’s one for a cake company. 

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 16-20 ten times each in cursive and write a sentence for each one. (2) Do the spelling crossword. (3) Do pages 226 and 227 in the Practice book. (4) Do the Bear Flag Revolt study sheet. (5) Do Dividing Fractions 4. (6) Do pages 325-327 in the math book. 

 

Murals

In the new reading program, there is a great deal of stress on learning to read nonfiction well, particularly “real world” nonfiction. So the third week in each unit is devoted to selections from Time for Kids. This week’s selection focused on the so-called “Great Wall of Los Angeles,” a mural painted in the San Fernando Valley between 1974 and 1984 by Judy Baca and a small army of volunteers. 

The mural was recently restored and updated. I pointed out to the students that at Third Street we have a number of murals, and one of these could be restored and updated, too. The mural in the lunch area showing Third Street School in the past, the present, and a somewhat fanciful future, lost one of its panels during some school construction.

I asked the students to devise their own visions of our school in the past, present, and future. 

A couple of the students were clearly influenced by our superintendent’s ideas about technology in the classroom. 

Tomorrow I will also have them do some writing about the idea of how the school changes over time.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 11-15 ten times each in cursive and do a sentence for each one. (2) Do pages 221 and 223 in the Practice book. (3) Do Dividing Fractions 3 worksheet. (4) Do pages 322-323 in the math book on multiplying and dividing in algebra problems.