Art tomorrow!!!

Here is an friendly reminder for art class tomorrow from Mrs. Schaffner! 

Students will be painting/stenciling tomorrow with acrylic paints. These paints do not come out of clothes so I recommend wearing clothes that are not your favorite or best. I have only a limited number of smocks (5) available in the art room though a student may bring their own if they wish. 

Week of December 3rd

Social Studies
Written by: Tommy, Keith and Brien

• The class wrote a rough draft postcard from a location from their region. We did this to teach everyone about our region.
• We wrote our final copy of are postcard and put the picture and postcard together.
• We took notes on the natural resources from our regions in our notes packet.
• Today we took notes on the landmarks from our regions in our note packet with the rest of our regions group.

Reading
Written by: James,Annie,Derek

• On Monday we sorted interesting versus important ideas.
• Tuesday we pretended we were THIEVES using text features to predict and find the main idea of paragraphs.
• On Thursday we learned boxes and bullets and we found the main idea about Pompeii, which was fun to learn about.
• On Friday we did boxes and bullet to find the main idea of paragraphs from an article about Pearl Harbor and Japanese Internment Camps.

Writing
Written by: Stacey,Amy

• On Monday we worked on stretching out our dot and jots in our persuasive essay.
• On Tuesday we added transition words to our persuasive piece of writing.
• The next day we learned how to vary our sentence lengths.
• Our class revised, edited, and published our persuasive piece.
• Today we picked our personal narrative topic and some of us finished our persuasive essay.

Choosing a topic - Slice of the Pie

Math
Written by: Cassidy, Paris

• On Monday we practiced multiplication and discussed what it means to add zero in the powers of ten rules.
• On Tuesday we learned how to use doubles and halves with Mrs.Stygles and Mrs. Gillis
• On Wednesday we made our power of ten posters in groups of threes and fours. We solved multiplication with cluster problems in small groups.
• On Thursday we did a workshop of three stations. Station one was Ms.Herlihy with quotient cafe where we practiced partial quotients.The second station was with Mrs. Stygles’s where we worked in our math workbooks on counting around the class. Then we had some independent work to do with division.
• On Friday, we began reviewing for our math test, which is Tuesday, December 11th.

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Week of Nov. 26th

Note from Mrs. Stygles:
Recently, when the students have drafted the blog entries, I spent time after revising and editing their work. Ultimately, I'd love to revise and edit less and for you to provide feedback to them about their written entries. My goal is for students to become careful writers and to clarify ideas so their message is informative, yet clear. As you read the blog, please let your child know where you may have been confused or where they explained things really well. Knowing that they have a real authentic audience will help to inspire them to be more thoughtful writers. I appreciate your support!

Reading
Written by: Jack F!, Tyler!, Brenna!

• We learned about text features for example table of contents and glossary. It helped us understand the features more and anticipate what we were going to read about.   
• Thursday, we continued practicing anticipating what we’ll read about. We read an article about Native Americans building skyscrapers.
• On Friday, we talked about interesting ideas versus important ideas.

 

Social Studies
Written By:Amy, Paris, Tommy, Keith

• We browsed the northeast regions book to find nonfiction features and we also picked our regions.
• We found out our regions and read Chapter 1 in our region books and took notes. We tracked our thinking using sticky notes.
• The class read chapter 2 in their region books and tracked our thinking differently. We tracked our thinking by separating our stickies into important stickies and interesting stickies.
• We took notes on landforms and waterways with the rest of our regions group.

Math
Written by: Derek, Brien, Kaitlyn, Shane, Liam

• On Tuesday and Wednesday we learned partial quotients and we have a choice to do that strategy or the equations strategy.
• We learned how to make multiple towers where you measure someone with a paper roll. We skip counted by one number and found the multiples of ten. This helped up practice the powers of ten rule.
• The class did a workshop where half of the class did multiple towers and the other half worked on division problems with Mrs. Stygles.  

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Writing
Written by: Giana, Annie, Hallie, Parsa

• We wrote our persuasive essay this week.
• We reviewed how to go from dot and jots to sentences.
• We learned how to stretch out our dot and jots. For example: iPads would help us or we would benefit a lot if you purchased ipads for us since there are many great apps kids could use.  
• We also learned how to make our leads sound really good.

Week of 11th and 18th

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving break!!!

Reading
Written By: Brien, Jack C, James, Stacey, Giana

• On Tuesday, we learned about how our characters have motivations and struggles and how they deal with it.
• We learned to use percise language in our stickies to describe our characters.
• Today we learned that some authors repeat things that are small because they can be really important later in the story.
• We talked again about the objects or ideas that repeat and how they could really mean something bigger. When we read A Bad Case of Stripes, we learned that it wasn't really about her eating lima beans, it was about her being herself and liking lima beans even if other people don't.
• We wrapped up our theories unit and spied on ourselves as readers. We looked at the stickies that we made and sorted them to see which ones we're doing well and which ones we need to do more of and then we set new reading goals.

 

Writing
Written by: Tommy, Annie, Shane, Derek, and  Kaitlyn

• We learned how to write a business letter and how it is formated.
• We took our time and wrote our letter to a landmark or landform in the United States and requested information to use for our regions project.
• We revised and edited our letter.
• We typed our business letter and had a great time on the computers!!!
• We started our new persuasive unit and came up with topics about school that we can write about.
• We picked our topics and stated planning all the reasons to support our argument.
• We planned out the different paragraphs for our essay.

  

Math
Written by: Parsa, Liam, Paris, Hallie, Tyler

• We worked on division problems with remainders in our math work books.
• At the the end of the week we did a three day workshop with three stations.
• During the workshop, we played Big Array/Small Array, Missing Factors and division fun with Mrs. Stygles.   
• We practiced solving more division problems with remainders on Monday and Tuesday.
• Mrs. Stygles gave us a grocery store flyer and we had to plan our Thanksgiving dinner using calculators.

 

Social Studies
Written by: Keith, Cassidy, Amy, JackF, Brenna

• On Tuesday we learned about map scales. We practiced finding distances of places in the United States.
• The next day we reviewed geography vocabulary and practiced things like map scale.
• We did a map check in on everything we’ve learned.
• On Friday, we had a surprise States and Capitals Test.
• On Monday, we corrected the test to see what we need to study.
• We learned what the different regions of the United States are and colored a map to show the different regions. We also made states and capitals flashcards.

Week of November 5th

Social Studies
By: Liam, Shane, Paris, Parsa, Hallie, and Tyler

• On Monday, we worked on using map keys to identify pictures and symbols on a map.

• On Tuesday we read two pages about longitude and latitude. After, we worked on a worksheet to practice longitude and latitude.
• Thursday we learned about cardinal directions and intermediate directions. We compared states to each other using directions.
• The class learned about map scales on Friday. Map scales are use to show how far places are from each other.

Reading
Written by: Brien, Cassidy, Sophie, James, Stacey

To help us with book talks

• On Monday we noticed how supporting characters react to the main character. This can tell us a lot about our character.
• On Tuesday, we worked on making good stickies that will tell us a lot about our characters instead of boring stickies like she’s nice, she’s mean or wow, he is a bully.
• On Thursday, we started to sort sticky notes into different piles like questions, predictions, retellings and what we notice about our characters. Sorting them helps us find the big ideas.
• On Friday, the class continued sorting sticky notes into piles and reading books. When we read we can still make different stickies but put the ones that help us grow theories into our character theory pile.

Writing

Written by: Tommy, Annie, Giana, Derek, Kaitlyn

• On Monday we talked about opinion writing which means to take a side of the argument. We brainstormed places where we see opinion writing.

• On Tuesday we read an article about ads on a school bus. We then took a side and wrote about if there should be ads on a school bus.
• Next, we read about the sugary drink ban in New York. We wrote about whether or not we agree with the ban.
• On Thursday, we discussed the word perspective and what that has to do with opinion writing. We reviewed the story of the Three Little Pigs and then read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. That book is told from the wolf’s perspective.
• We all took a side of the Three Little Pigs argument and came up with reasons for our side. Then we had a debate in class about who was telling the truth.
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Math
Written by: Jack F, Amy, Keith, and Brenna and Jack C.

• On Monday we started a math workshop. Some students played Big Array, Small Array while others solved multiplication workbook pages with Mrs. Stygles.
• Tuesday the workshop continued. Also we took an assessment and we did some challenges too.
• On Wednesday, we learned how to solve multiplication using partial products and we practiced it a lot.
• Thursday, the whole class did partial products up to the one hundreds and thousands place.
• On Friday, we did division problems and learned how to check them with multiplication.

Solving multiplication using arrays

Our first attempt with division!

ELECTION RESULTS - 2012!!!!!

4S has voted and election results are in! The winner was....

Mitt Romney!!!!!


***Sorry for the delay, I've been trying to include the voting video but with no success. I'll keep trying!!!!

Week of October 31st

Announcements
Last week, I experienced a new first: A Hurricane Day! Hopefully this isn't a sign of what's in store for the winter!

Conferences will begin on November 7th. The twenty minutes will go by quickly, so if there is anything specific you want to discuss, please feel free to email me in advance.

No School - Veteran's Day (November 12th)

I want to thank Mrs. Cox and Mrs. McCusker for organizing our Halloween Party! Here are a few photos from the party.
     

Writing: 

• The goal for the week was to publish their story. To do this, they copied their stories over, drew illustrations and decided how to put it together.
• Stories will be handed out to parents at conferences so we can go over the grading together.
• Parents are encouraged to read the stories with their child and celebrate the writing skills they are including. With this being their first, true published piece, all students will have goals to continue working on.

Reading: 

• The focus is to continue developing theories about characters. These lessons will help students develop their inferring skills. Lessons from this week:
• Good readers read characters the same way we read people in real life. 
• Readers pay attention to when the character acts out of character and their reasons for doing so.
• Readers pay attention to the objects that the character holds close.

Math

• We spent time solving complicated multiplication problems by breaking them into easier, friendlier numbers. 
• Students spent time using the array model to break apart bigger numbers and used this model solve multiplication problems. 
• Students learned how to play a game called Big Array, Small Array to practice breaking numbers apart. In addition, it helped them practice writing equations to show how the two smaller numbers equal the big number. 

                 

                 

Science/Social Studies

• Students took the science test this Wednesday. Hopefully, I will pass them back by next week. 
• Students are starting a new social studies mini-unit about geography and mapping. They have been doing some reading in our Junior Geographer Atlas books.
• They spent some time discussing the difference between globes and maps and how to decode maps.