Not So White Winter

Wassup human beings!

This week was a short and hectic week. Here is what we've been up to:

In Writing, we are trying to free-write on lots of different topics to inspire our essay-writing. We looked at a 4th grader's free-writing from last year and noticed how he wrote on the topic of friendship for more than a page. We practiced writing our own entries and pushed our thinking with prompts like "an example of this is" and "to add on..."

In Math, we took our Unit 5 Math Assessment. We also spent today building snow-people. The parts of the snow people (like their noses, buttons, hats brooms) weighed different amounts and had different prices. We weren't allowed to spend more than $25 and it couldn't weigh more than 50 pounds. Here is a picture of the snow-people we eventually built:


In Reading, we read the biography, Miss Moore Thought Otherwise about a woman who got children's rooms in libraries. We also read, As Good As Anybody about Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr.

In Social Studies we finally got to do an activity on the Everglades in Florida. We were each assigned an animal or thing in the Everglades and then we worked to figure out how we were all connected. Here is a picture of the web we created.





We also had our final round of Non-traditional Homework Presentations. Here are all their pictures:



 
 

We hope you all have a great Winter Vacation!
See you in 2016!

Your bloggers,
Shira, Samantha, Billy, Matt, and Lena (and Ms. Swaim, the typer)

PS
Merry Christmas and a belated Hannukah

Week before a three day week

Hello-

This week was weird/action-packed week. Here is what we've been up to (dunn...dunn...dunn...)

In Reading we are still learning about biographies. We read the biography, Who Says Women Can't be Doctors? and thought about women's rights and how the setting of the time period was unfair. We also started wondering, who gets biographies written about them. We learned about the possibility of having a Social Justice Workshop (after break) where we discuss challenging topics that have to do with fairness.

In Writing, we continued to brainstorm entries for our opinion writing unit. We also had a Writing Celebration and finished our stories for good. Here are some pictures of the celebration. A LOT of family and Franklin teachers came!    

In Math, we are still in the middle of our multiplication unit. We took our 5s and Shira took her 12s test. We learned about expanded notation and practiced the box method and the partial product method for multiplication.

In Social Studies, we finished up our study guides of the South East and are having our quiz show today.

In other news, there are no Fourthlandian birthdays until January 15th (two students share a birthday) and January 19th!

Well, see ya later (said in a Western accent)
Shira & Samantha

The Blog

Hellooooooooooooo!


This week was a crazy but somewhat normal week. Here is what we were up to:


In Math, we started a new unit on multiplication! We are learning the box method and the partial product method. Here is a picture of the box method strategy and a youtube video of the partial products method:



In Reading, we are in the midst of a Biography Unit. Some of us read Wilma Unlimited while others of us studied Nelson Mandela and read the picture book version of his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. Both groups thought about setting and the individuals amazing character traits.

In Writing, we have been working on opinion essays. We practiced the structure of essays by writing a quick draft using the thesis statement, "I love ice cream." We supported our thesis statement with reasons and evidence. Next week we will begin thinking about how the content of our essays is just as important as the structure.

In Social Studies, we continued learning about the South East. In other news, we had our second round of Non-traditional Homework Presentations. Here are some pictures of our presenters.

Goodbye virtual tiny people,

Shira, Samantha, Matt,  Ms. Swaim, 
The Computer, & The Virtual Tiny Pixals

The Great Visit

Hello Fourthlandian Families!

This week was a busy and action-packed week because we had a long holiday weekend. Here is some of what we did:

In Math, we took a unit test and our 4s multiplication fact test. Some of us took our 9s and a 50 fact test. We also learned a lot about decimals before our unit test (how to add them, subtract them and plot them on a number line). We did A LOT of practice before taking the test.

In Reading we finished our unit of study on Short Stories. We learned about theme and how it is the heart of the story, and the message that the author really wants you to know. We read Fly Away Home which was a sad story about a boy who lives with his dad in an airport.

In Writing, we took an on-demand to finish up our realistic fiction unit. We also started opinion writing on topics of our choice. Next week we are going to learn about essay writing and will choose topics we REALLY care about. Ms. Swaim is going to be writing about how dogs make the best pets. 


In Social Studies, we started studying the South East region of the US. We labeled maps of the region and started South East study guides to learn about the land and resources of the region.

In other news, we had our first round of Non-traditional Homework presentations. They were really good and we have a lot of pictures of the presenters:

                     

          







                        











We also had author and illustrator, Kevin Hawkes visit. He was AWESOME and showed us how he draws and illustrates books. Here are some pictures:



Goodbye and see you soon!
Samantha, Shira, Matt, and Ms. Swaim