Miss Shifflette's News and Notes 12/16/11
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- Category: Fourth
- Published on Friday, 16 December 2011 13:38
- Written by Kelly Shifflette
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4th Grade News and Notes
Kelly Shifflette
Dec 16, 2011
Hello Parents,
Wow! We have had a busy 2 weeks! Everyone is excited about the coming vacation, and the energy in the room has been high and lively! We have spent some time learning ways to give each other compliments in a way that is respectful and meaningful. There is a compliment box in our room where the kids can offer a compliment to someone anonymously. There have been some very nice things said like:
- “I like how you are always up for a challenge!”
- When you smile it warms my heart.”
- I love your style.”
- You are doing a great job in French even though you are new.”
I am encouraging everyone to keep them coming and challenging them to offer compliments to different people in our room, not just our good friends.
Now that the weather is getting colder, I insist that the children wear their coats when we go to the woods on Friday. Many of them like to take their coats off but I feel they need to have a heavy sweatshirt on at the least. There are some kids who insist that they are allowed to be outside in a t-shirt, so my new rule is that they need to bring in a note from parents letting me know this is okay before I will let them take off their coats and wear just a short sleeve.
Health
During our lessons on the immune system, the students have participated in 2 fun simulations about spreading germs. One demonstrated how germs on our hands are spread, by using cinnamon and oil. The other was a fun activity where kids “shared” their germs in different ways by passing a friend a card and putting some of their liquid into a friend’s cup. Each card had a common way germs are spread (not washing hands after using the bathroom). One person in the class was “infected” with the flu originally. After everyone shared their “germs” we put baking soda into the cups. Whosever liquid fizzed was infected with the flu. Ask your child if they got the flu!
Science
We have been learning about Force and Motion. Force means a push or a pull. After investigating what it felt like to push and pull some objects, the students came up with a question: Does it take more force to push or to life an object? Each of them practiced the skill of writing a hypothesis and conducting the experiment. Using a spring scale, and measuring in Newton’s, they measured pulling and lifting certain objects. See if your child can answer the question! (The answer is “lift”)
W.O.W
Last week: HYPERBOLE- An extreme exaggeration. Writers use this to make a point.
“I had to walk a million miles to get here. My feet are killing me!”
We are practicing using this in our own writing!
This week: INFERENCE- To make a good guess based on background knowledge and clues found in the text.
This is a skill we are practicing all week in Shared Literacy to help us better understand the texts we read.
Math
Our focus these last few weeks has been division. Some concepts we have spent time on are:
- Making sense of remainders
- Representing a division problem with a story and diagrams
- Using known multiplication combinations to solve division problems
- Recognizing related problems (Fact Families)
- Understanding the effect of multiplying by a multiple of 10
For example: 3x4=12….3x40=120
Hope everyone is enjoying this holiday season!
Kelly Shifflette