Paper Airplanes in School?

We divided into 4 "corporations" to design and build the best airplane.  It's all economics!  We had 5 minutes to come up with a "business plan." We decided on the design and how to get it built fastest.  Then we had 3 minutes to build and test the planes.  The team that got the most planes through the hoops won!  This activity created great questions about successful business practices and market economies in the United States.  Social Studies can be fun!

Guest Readers

Thank you to Angela #32, Sam #21, and Lucy #12 from the MTU Women's Basketball team for being our very special guest readers to help celebrate "March is Reading Month."  What great role models these young women are!

Student-Led Conferences

Oh!  It's been way too long!  So sorry about not keeping up with my blog posting.

Please be sure to check out the slideshow of photos to the right of some of our student-led conferences.  I love student-led conferences!  It is something we prepare for throughout the year.  Kids love the undivided attention from their invited guests, even though reactions differ widely.  I get to see everything from the normally relaxed student becoming very nervous, to the quiet child yapping it up for a solid 30 minutes!  The students read "You know me as I am at home.  My teacher knows me as I am at school.  The real "me" is somewhere in between".  That is SO true, and something we sometimes tend to forget.  After all the preparations, my job is to observe..........and that is my favorite part!  Thank you parents and guardians, for entrusting such great kids to me every school day.

"The Trial of Freddie Fungus" Reader's Theater

Introducing the Red Wings group!

Introducing the "Bears" group!

Introducing the "Dogs" group!

And the "Shooting Stars!"

Recent Photos

Everyone is hard at work! (But it was fun work...)

Owl Day!!!

We dissected owl pellets today.  Watch for neat pictures to be posted this weekend.  While we were at work, we kept our eye on the owl live web cam.  Cute, cute, cute!  check it out:  Owl Web Cam

The Last Week in October

What a busy one!  Check out the photos taken while we were with our kindergarten reading buddies.  So cute!  We read a fun poem and helped write some recipes for "Spider Soup."

We also went on a field trip to learn about raptors from Upper Michigan Raptor Rehab.  Very cool!  We saw live owls and hawks.

 We capped off our week by having rootbeer and orange floats while showing off our Halloween costumes.

The New Glue Crew!

Our class is in charge of collecting empty glue bottles and glue sticks.  We will send them to Elmer's at the end of the year and they will recycle them!  The bottles do not have to be Elmer's brand and you are welcome to send them in from home.  One more little thing we do to help save our planet!

Week of October 2nd

Our highlight this week was a field trip to Calumet Waterworks Park.  We learned about some animal adaptaions by playing two games.  They were called Oh Deer, and Bear Survival.  We also walked in the woods to find signs of animals.  We found things like scat, woodpecker holes, bugs, and a woodpecker.  The presenters showed us antlers, skulls, skin, wings, porcupine quills, a turkey waddle, and signs of insect homes.

Adaptations are fun to study because we've seen some cool videos and some animals have very weird adaptations.

We learned that there is more than one way to add and subtract larger numbers.  Partial sums and partial differences is a type of algorithm.  It's a really different way to look at a problem.  Do you know what these things are?  Maximum, minimum, range, mode, median, and mean.  They are called landmarks!  We use them to organize and make sense of data.

Week of September 13

What is a convex polygon?  How about a concave (or nonconvex) polygon?  Ask us!

We worked hard on labeling the continents of the world and many landmarks.  We met our reading teacher and took off on our 4th grade reading adventure!  Friday was Constitution Day.  We watched "Shhhhh...We're Writing the Constitution."

Kings, Kings, They're the Best!

Day 2 of fourth grade!

Welcome!

Ready to dive into the wonderful world of 4th grade? This is our "Learning Log Blog." We will post new and interesting things we have learned as a class each week. Be sure to visit us often!